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THE HIGHER POWERS 

OF MAN 



BY 

Frederick M. Smith 



A dissertation submitted to the faculty of 
Clark University, Worcester, Mass., in partial 
fulfillment of the requirements for the de- 
gree of Doctor of Philosophy, and accepted 
on the recommendation of G. Stanley Hall 



Copyright, 1918, by Frederick M. Smith 



PRINTED BY 

THE HERALD PUBLISHING HOUSE 

LAMONI, IOWA 

1918 



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BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Books Bead and Consulted 

"The Energies of Men," by William James, Philosophical Re- 
vieio, vol. IG, (1907) pp. 1-20. 

"Human Efficiency," by G. S. Hall, An address to Clark Col- 
lege, 1909. 

"The Psychology of Second Breath," by G. E. Partridge, Fed- 
agogical Seminaiy, vol. 4, no. 3. 

"The Psychology of Intemperance," by G. E. Partridge. 

"In Quest of the Alcohol Motive," by G. T. Patrick, Popular 
Science Monthly, vol. 83, p. 349. 

"Studies in the Psychology of Alcohol," by G. E. Partridge, 
American Journal of Psychology, vol. 3, no. 3, 

"History of Drink," by Samuelson. 

"Psychology of Relaxation," by G. T. Patrick, Popular Science 
Monthly, vol. 18, p. 590. 

"Die Ekstasen des Menschen," von Mantegazza. 

"Die Biologische Bedeutimg der Ekstase," von Tim. SegaloflF, 
Zeitschrift fill Psychotherapie und Medizinsche Psychologic. 

"Anhalonium Lewinii," by Doctor Lewinii, Therapeutic Gazette, 
1888, p. 231. 

"Ecstasy," by Th. Ribot, Open Court, December 5, 1889. 

"Mescal Buttons," by H. H. Rusby, Bulletin of Pharmacy, 1894, 
p. 30(3. 

"Contributions to United States National Herbarium," by J. 
M. Coulter, vol. 3, no. 2. 

"Notes on Anhalonium Lewinii," by S. F. Landrj^ Therapeutic 
Gazette, 1889, vol. 5, no. 1. 

"Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons)" by Prentiss and Mor- 
gan, Therapeutic Gazette, vol. 19, no. 9. 

"Therapeutic Uses of Mescal Buttons (Anhalonium Lewinii)," 
by Prentiss and Morgan, Therapeutic Gazette, January 15, 1896. 

"Mescal Plant and Ceremony," by James Mooney, Therapeutic 
Gazette, Januarv 15, 1896. 



"Tarahumari Dances and Plant Worship," by Carl Lumholtz, 
Scribners, vol. 16, no. 4. 

''Symbolism of the Huichol Indians," by Carl Lumlioltz, Museum 
of Natural Histoiy, vol. 3, Anthro. v. 3. 

"Unknown Mexico^" Carl Limiholtz, 2 volumes. 

"Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians," by James Mooney, 
17th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, part 1. 

"The Chemistry of the Cactaceae," by E. E. Ewell, Journal of 
the American Chemists' Society, 1896, vol. 18, p. 624. 

"Artificial Ecstasy," by S. W. Mitchell, British Medical Jour- 
nal, December 5, 1896, p. 1635. 

"Mescal Buttons," by Prentiss and Morgan, Medical Record, 
August 22, 1896. 

"Primitive Culture," by Tylor. 

"Origin of Civilization and Primitive Conditions of Man," by 
Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock). 

"Marriage, Totemism, and Religion," by Lord Avebury. 

"Totemism and Exogamy," by Frazer. 

"Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals," by F. M. Davenport. 

"Sociology," by Spencer. 

"Origin of Civilization," by A. Lang. 

"Customs and Myths," by A. Lang. 

"Myth, Ritual, and Religion," by A. Lang. 

■'Primitive Secret Societies," by Webster. 

"Religions of Primitive Peoples," by Brinton. 

"From Religion to Philosophy," by Cranford. 

"Psychology of Religious Belief," by Pratt, 

"Themis," by Harrison. 

"The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity," by Cutten. 

"The Development of Religion," by King. 

"Varieties of Religious Experience," by William James. 

"Historic Bases of Religion," by H. C. Broun. 

"Makers of Men," by C. J. Whitby. 

"Kamelaroi and Kurnai," by Fison. 

"The Algonquin Manitou," by William Jones in Journal of 
American Folk-Lore, vol. 18, p. 184. 

"Sacred Fonnulas of the Cherokees," by James Mooney, Report 
of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1885-86, 



"The Ghost Dance Religion," by James Mooney, 14th Annual 
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. 

"The Sia," by M. C. Stevenson, in 11th Annual Report of the 
Bureau of Ethnology. 

"The Zuni," by M. C. Stevenson, in 23d Annual Report of the 
Bureau of Ethnology. 

"The Snake Dance of the Moquis," by Captain Bourke. 

"The Red Men of North America," by Schoolcraft. 

"North American Indians," by Catlin. 

"Handbook of American Indians." 

"The Iroquois Book of Rites," by H. Hale. 

"Who Was the Medicine Man," by F. LaFlesche, in Journal of 
American Folk-Lore, vol. 18, p. 375. 

"The Tribes of California," by Stephen Powers. Contributions 
to North American Ethnology, vol. 3. 

"Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley," by Swanton, 
Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, no. 43. 

"The Omahas," 3d Annual Report of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology. 

"The Zunis," 5th Annual Report of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology. 

"The Central Eskimos," 6th Annual Report of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology. 

"The Ojibway Indians," 7th Annual Report of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology. 

"The Aztecs," by Lucian Biart. 

"Aborigines of South America," by Colonel G. E. Church. 

Article by Powell in 7th Annual Report of the Bureau of Amer- 
ican Ethnolog}^ 

"The Jesuits in North America," by Francis Parkman. 

"Among the Oglala Dakotas," 11th Annual Report of the 
Bureau of American Ethnology. 

Article by Dorsey in 18th Annual Report of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology. 

"A Study of Siouan Cults," by Dorsey, 11th Annual Report 
of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 

"Medicine Men of the Apache," 9th Annual Report of the 
Bureau of American Ethnology. 

"Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects 

5 



of the Indian Tribes of the United States," by Schoolcraft, vol. 1. 

Bulletin of American Museum of Natural History, vol. 8. 

Article, Sth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Eth- 
nology. 

"Indian Tribes of New Guiana," by Brett. 

"The Native Races of South Africa," by Stow. 

"The Religion of the Semites," by Smith. 

"On Vodu Worship," by Major A. B. Ellis, in Popular Science 
Monthly, March, 1891. 

"Faiths of Man," art. Vocliuis, Vaiidaux. 

"The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope," by Kolben. 

"Hinduism," by Barnett. 

"Early Buddhism," by Rhys-Davids. 

"The Buddha and His Religion," by J. B. Saint Hilliare. 

"The Religions of India," by A. Barth, translated by Rev- 
erend J. Wood. 

"The Religion of Ancient Greece," by Harrison. 

"The Native Tribes of Southeastern Australia," by Howitt. 

"The Native Races of Australia," by N. W. Thomas. 

"The Native Tribes of Central Australia," by Spencer and 
Gillen. 

"The Northern Tribes of Central Australia," Spencer and Gillen. 

"Friedrich Nietzsche, the Dionysian Spirit of the Age," by A. 
R. Orage. 

"Friedrich Nietzsche, His Life and Work," by Mugge. 

"Philosophy of Nietzsche," by Broene. 

"Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche," by Manchen. 

"Anger," by G. S. Hall, Amencan Journal of Psychology, vol. 10. 

"Introduction a V etude de la Colere chez les Alienes," Paris, 
1889. 

"The Amok of the Malays," by W. G. Ellis, M. D., Journal of 
Medical Science, July, 1893. 

"Jesus," by W. Bousset, translated by J. P. Trevelyan. 

"Ecce Homo." 

"Life of Christ," by Geikie. 

"Life of Christ," by Fleetwood. 

"Life of Christ," by Farrar. 



*'0n Health, Fatigue, and Repose," by William Stirling, M. D., 
British Medical Journal, December 6, 1913. 

"Physiology," by Starling. 

"Personal Hygiene," by Pyle. 

"Some Considerations Regarding the Factor of Fatigue with 
Reference to Industrial Conditions," by AV. A. White, M. D., in 
American Journal of Medical Science, CXIV (1913), p. 219. 

"Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage," by W. B, 
Cannon, M. D. 

"The Conditions of Fatigue in the Nervous System." 



INTRODUCTION 

The phenomena of "second breath" are known 
to every schoolboy, and have played a great role 
in primitive human life. When a boy has run 
until he is out of breath and ready to drop with 
fatigue, he often experiences a reinforcement of 
energy and a new type of breathing and then 
can run on indefinitely. So in studying late at 
night, if we force our way through the ripraps 
of exhaustion and sleepiness, we often experience 
a new wakefulness, like a kind of afflatus or in- 
spiration, and we can write better and study more 
easily. It is not enough to describe this state by 
saying that the fatigue sense is fatigued and 
drops out of function; nor is it enough to con- 
ceive it, with Felt a, as an adrenaline state, al- 
though, as Cannon has shown, the sudden flushing 
of the blood with adrenaline is the physiological 
basis of the reinforcement of energy that fear 
and anger so often give. Psychologically, there 
as much to be said in favor of the views which 
conceive of it as if the individual in such states 
were able to tap the resources of the race that 
slumber in him. 

There are always two aspects of human nature. 



One is the individual and conscious, and the other, 
the phyletic or racial, which is more unconscious 
and generic. It is this that constitutes the deeper 
nature of man and in such varied phenomena as 
inspiration, whether thought to be due to the 
Holy Ghost or to a muse; and ecstasy, whether 
of sense, thought, feeling, or will; and in all su- 
l^erlative achievements of man in every domain, 
we have manifestations of this higher, larger, 
stronger, racial self, expressed in the individual. 
There is much justification for saying that most 
of the greatest achievements of man, not merely 
in artistic creation and the works of genius, where 
we are most ready to recognize it, but even in 
intellectual domains, have been done in this second 
or higher state, or at least have owed much to it, 
and a high authority on war has lately told us 
that this war will be won by that side that can 
ring up most of this reserve energy, when they 
go "over the top," or in a bayonet charge. 

It is not surprising that these phenomena have, 
especially in recent years, been connected with 
sex erethism, for in reproduction we have, as it 
were, an apparition of the soul of the race per- 
forming its great function of transmitting the 
sacred torch of life along with and beneath the 
hedonic personal factors. 



Moreover, it is now pretty clear that a spurty 
diathesis is often associated with self -abuse. This 
accounts for the inveterate propensity in every 
religion, from Dionysic orgies to certain recent 
forms of revivalism, to be accompanied by sex 
phenomena; and it gives a certain basis to theo- 
ries that conceive many, if not most, of the higher 
moral, intellectual powers of man as products of 
sex sublimation. This view, too, gives us the 
best key yet found to the problem of sex instruc- 
tion, which is that wherever we can excite inter- 
est of any sort and degree, we are setting a back- 
fire to erotic temptations, and that to fill the 
skulls and curricula with topics that absorb at- 
tention and arouse enthusiasm, to have the life 
of the young, particularly during the plastic and 
susceptible years of adolescence, pervaded with 
activities that are highly toned emotionally, is 
one of the best criteria by which to measure the 
effectiveness, not only of a system of education, 
but even the value of a religion. When the school 
is dull and life is drab and religion a dead form, 
and in general when zests grow pale, then the 
dangers of lust increase. 

The world is just beginning to learn the value 
of these higher states and how to turn on super- 
personal motivations. Some modern conceptions 



of Jesus make Him essentially not only the to- 
temic, racial man, but the One who, more than 
any other, throughout His public ministry, main- 
tained this higher and more exalted state. The 
study of these phenomena which Doctor Smith 
here sets forth, is well calculated to give us a 
higher conception of the possibilities of life and 
of every kind of education. It shows that the 
higher phenomena of holiness are not something 
entirely apart but really belong to the altitude 
phenomena of human nature, which are incom- 
plete without them. Not only religion but moral- 
ity is illuminated. These dynamic energies that 
break into the ordinary life of the individual may 
be good or bad, but the bad is more than ever 
seen to be only undeveloped good, and certain 
principles, such as those known to psychology as 
transfer and the conditioned reflex, that teach 
us how easily, if we only know the secret, the 
powers of evil can be converted, as the wrath of 
man may be made to praise God. The more we 
know of the old cults about the eastern Medi- 
terranean that preceded Christianity, and also 
about mysticism and esoteric knowledge, which 
found imperfect expression in the loftier insights 
of all the great mystics, even in alchemy and the 
hermetic and rosicrucian symbols, the more we 



12 



are now learning how intense is the warfare man 
has waged with himself to overcome animal and 
infantile propensities by giving them an ever 
higher, more spiritual interpretation, so that we 
can now glimpse the pregnant sense in which 
consciousness itself sprang from and can be un- 
derstood only by conscience. Thus, while man 
has always been prone to unchain and even give 
way to passion, he has also always been unremit- 
ting in his efforts to transmute it into its higher 
psychodynamic equivalents. Thus the highest 
virtue, beauty, truth, is itself passionate. 

G. Stanley Hall. 

Clark University, January, 1918. 

IS 



THE HIGHER POWERS OF MAN, 

Chapter 1 

Some eight years ago Doctor WilHam James 
pubHshed an article under the caption *'The 
Energies of Men" which received much attention 
from the public and did not escape severe criti- 
cism of some (chiefly newspaper men), who 
branded it as a doctrine of overstrain or an advo- 
cacy of the use of stimulants (opium and alcohol) 
in emergencies. Against such an interpretation 
of his thoughtful article Doctor James vigor- 
ously protested, asserting that the simple mes- 
sage could scarcely be misread by even a casual 
if fair-minded reader, that simple message being 
that "second wind" as a mental phenomenon is 
as real as second breath in the physical realm, and 
affords a reservoir of energy to be drawn upon 
when necessary. 

Some four years later Doctor G. Stanley Hall 
in a commencement address delivered at Clark 
College made a strong appeal for individual en- 
deavor directed toward greater human efficiencj^ 
in all walks and avocations of life ; the community 
efficiency as the sum total of individual efficiencies 
to be increased by an increase of efficiency on the 

16 



16 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

part of each member of the community. It was a 
plea not alone for an intensification of application 
and a speeding up by the present workers, but 
for an augmentation of general or the common 
efficiency by elimination of the indolency of opu- 
lency and the indifference of the comfortably 
situated. 

Our present thesis can be said to concern itself 
with the correlation of Doctor James's "Ener- 
gies of Men" and Doctor Hall's "Human Effi- 
ciency" by scrutinizing some of the human habits, 
customs, institutions, traits, and forces which con- 
tribute to the higher powers of man and their 
direction towards better things and accomplish- 
ment. 

As a starting point, then, it is well to briefly 
epitomize the articles to which reference is made. 



Doctor James's ''Energies of Men/' 

"Warming up" to one's job by wearing off an 
initial feeling of "staleness" is a common experi- 
ence. To carry the warming up process up to 
the acquirement of "second wind" is not so com- 
mon, but is not rare. But those who push their 
activities beyond this "first layer of fatigue" are 
few compared to those who remain this side of it. 



DOCTORS JAMES AND HALL 17 

May there not also be a third and fourth * 'wind," 
representing deeper layers of reserve energy, 
mental as well as physical? 

Physiologists term a man's condition "nutri- 
tive equilibrium" when he neither gains nor loses 
in weight, this equilibrium being maintained by 
functional adjustment to varying quantities of 
rations. Usually the daily rations remain by 
habit quite uniform. "Efficiency equilibrium" 
may and does obtain on varying quantities of 
work in varying directions, — physical, moral, in- 
tellectual, spiritual. 

Of course there are limits, but exceptional are 
the individuals who crowd them. But the indi- 
vidual pushing his energies close to the limit may 
still, under wholesome conditions, maintain the 
pace because the physical organism augments the 
rate of repair to correspond to the augmented 
waste. 

Few men are active to their utmost limit of 
energy. Anyone may at different rates of ener- 
gizing remain in vital equilibrium. One comes 
short of his possibilities who energizes below that 
normal maximum. How can we induce all men 
to reach and maintain the most useful tension of 
physical and nervous energy to be expended in 
"inner" and outer work? And this problem di- 



18 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

vides into ascertaining (1) the limits of the 
human faculty variously directed and (2) deter- 
mining the several ways in which just the right 
stimulus may be applied to the differing types 
of individuals to produce the maximum of results. 
This twofold problem has probably never been 
subjected to scientific inquiry. 

It will be generally conceded that habitually 
the great majority of men use only a small part 
of the powers of which they are capable ; they live 
below their maximum of energy and their opti- 
mum of behavior. It is so from inveterate habit 
of being inferior to one's full self. 

But some men do escape this inferiority to their 
fuller sense. To what do they owe the escape? 
And in the individual fluctuations of energy, to 
what are the improvements due? The answer is 
plain: To ecccitement, ideas, and efforts. These 
push us over the dam of first fatigue. Most of 
us may learn to surmount this and thus be able to 
live on higher levels of energizing. 

The fast life of the urbanite quite terrifies the 
rustic ; but let the countryman remove to the city 
and he soon adjusts himself to the pace, — he vi- 
brates to the rhythm of the city, — under the stim- 
ulation of duty, imitation, and crowd pressure, 
and the new level of energy is maintained. 



DOCTORS JAMES AND HALL 19 

Examples where emergencies have forced per- 
sons into higher levels of activity not previously 
thought possible are numerous. A frail mother 
already heavily burdened nurses a husband or 
child through an illness; in many poor homes a 
woman is showing sustained endurance in holding 
the family together and by her thoughtful appli- 
cation to constant and numerous duties is keeping 
things going till the family shall have fulfilled its 
purpose. The Acadamie Francaise has repeat- 
edly given prizes for best examples of "virtue" 
to many exemplary housewives, of which Jeanne 
Choix may serve as a type. The eldest of six 
children, the father an invalid, the mother insane, 
Jeanne's splendid courage, plus her small wages 
at a pasteboard-box factory, holds and directs the 
family and brings up the children. 

Every emergency, shipwreck, mine disaster, 
siege, cataclysm brings out its hero, — one who 
could tap the deeper lying layers of energy and 
keep up his own courage and that of fellow un- 
fortunates. 

The case of Colonel Baird- Smith is cited. That 
officer, so prominent a factor in the siege of Delhi 
in 1857, for six weeks, despite the handicap of 
scurvy, sores, and livid spots over the body, a 
wounded foot turned black from infection, was 



20 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

carried to his point of duty where he remained 
on duty though suffering additionally from a 
badly wrenched elbow and constant diarrhoea. 
Through it all he worked, planned, cheered the 
men, and collapsed only after the work was done. 
Excitement and the use of narcotics were the 
means of throwing into gear the reserved stores 
of energy. 

For weeks and months the deeper use of these 
reserves may go on, the process of repair being 
carried on at a rate different from the ordinary. 

When normally appearing tasks and stimula- 
tions do not serve to throw in gear these higher 
powers, deleterious excitement ma}^ do so. But 
this means the borderland of constitutional ab- 
normality. To open these deeper levels under 
normal conditions the will must funct ionize. And 
a single stimulation of the will may suffice to put 
a man for weeks on a higher level, open a new 
conscious range of power. 

The usual habitual life along the shallower 
levels tends to close in and shut out the higher 
sources. Ascetic life, j)assing from easy to more 
difficult tasks, habituates towards constant ener- 
gizing in the higher levels. By the Yoga system 
Hindu aspirants train themselves for months and 
years to attain certain mental attitudes with defi- 



DOCTORS JAMES AND HALL 21 

nite results. Their long devotion to certain ideas 
seems to unlock the reserves, though crises of re- 
ligion, love, indignation may by a short cut attain 
the results reached by the years of patient A^oga 
practice. Ideas may become the dynamogenic 
agents in unlocking reservoirs of energy, the 
vitalizing power of the idea itself depending upon 
the person into whose mind the idea is injected. 
When effective these ideas may transfigure the 
whole life of the individual. Examples of 
energy-releasing ideas are "Fatherland," 
"Truth," "the Flag," "the Church," "Science," 
"Liberty," etc. 

The memory of a pledge, a vow, a promise, 
will stimulate to abstinences difficult of achieve- 
ment. 

Conversions, acting as challengers to the will, 
stimulate to higher activity, though religiously 
the idea may lie for years in the mind before it ex- 
erts effects. Healthy-minded and optimistic 
ideas gathered from "Xew Thought," "Christian 
Science," "Metaphysical Healing," or other sys- 
tems of spiritual philosophy by suppressing 
"fear-thought" or the "self-suggestion of inferi- 
ority" have in many instances gone far towards 
developing a moral tone of sufficient elasticity to 
rise above the handicap of bodily ailment till even 



22 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

one afflicted with serious cancer can be cheerfully 
active and unusually beneficent to others. The 
mind-cure movement is essentially religious, and 
however scientifically grotesque its utterances it 
is yet socially important and of therapeutic value 
even in medicine. Praj^er, when not sealed up by 
a scientifically critical atmosphere, may be an 
energizer to higher activity. 

Social conventions tend to suppression of truth 
and taboo certain topics of conversation and tie 
down our intellect by literality and decorum. 

The two questions, then, the possible expansion 
of our powers and the methods of tapping the 
sources thereof in various individuals, dominate 
the problem of national and individual education. 
We need to chart human limits of energy and 
study human types, so as to learn how to find and 
utilize the reserves of energy. Much of human 
experiences may be drawn on for evidence. 

From the foregoing it appears that Doctor 
James endeavors simply to maintain his assertion 
that it is possible to reach higher levels of energy 
than are usually reached by individuals. With 
this he couples the statement of the problem it 
presents, viz. How can individual and community 
education be so directed as to appropriate for 



DOCTORS JAMES AND HALL 33 

community advancement all the tremendous bene- 
fits and results possible if all persons rather than 
a few were energizing at their maximum possi- 
bility rather than near the lowest limit? He at- 
tempts no solution of the problem, nor does he 
even make suggestion as to its solution, resting 
content Avith its statement. 

One of the purposes of this book is to make a 
brief study of some of the human institutions, 
habits, customs, which have contributed towards 
pushing persons and peoples on to these higher 
levels, though no solution of the pedagogical 
problem will be attempted, further than a mere 
suggestion. 

Doctor Hall's address on "Human Efficiency" 
starts with some very practical aspects of the 
problem and traces some of the developments to- 
wards increased efficiency more by eliminating 
waste than by increase of activity, a conservation 
of energy by decreasing lost motion rather than 
by bringing into play the reserve of power. But 
he, too, recognizes the existence of this great re- 
serve untouched by the majority, though the prob- 
lem of how to learn its general use is still unsolved. 
It is well here to give a brief resume of Doctor 
Hall's address. 



24 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Doctor Hall on "'Human Efficiency/' 

The culture ideal of our intense practical ac- 
tivity has passed through three stages. The first, 
enterprise and endeavor, had for its slogan "ex- 
celsior," and constantly held out the boundless 
possibilities of the individual. Next came the call 
for strenuosity. Achieve by keeping nerve and 
muscle taut. It was an ideal of stress and was 
prone to overdraw our resources. Then came the 
third ideal, — that of efficiency, adding economy 
and simplicity to the high aim of the first and the 
intensity of the second. This third ideal aims at 
the greatest results by the least expenditure of 
effort. In these three we have the best expression 
of the American ideal and spirit. 

A few of the special aspects are : 

1. By long and careful study the movements 
in bricklaying were reduced to a minimum, result- 
ing in doubling the amount laid with less fatigue. 
By teaching economy of movement the loading 
of pig iron was increased nearly four hundred 
per cent, with no increase of fatigue. In coal 
heaving, by regulating the load, pauses, and in- 
tervals, the work was doubled and more. Simi- 
lar economies of energy have been achieved in the 
sorting of steel balls for bearings, preparation of 
circular letters, hod carrying, canning, labeling. 



DOCTORS JAMES AND HALL 25 

and perhaps scores of other processes simpHfied 
by analysis with concomitant saving in results 
and conservation of human energy. 

2. Investigation in the use of tools and ma- 
chinery, saving changes in the size of cutting in 
lathes, the size, form, weight, of ax, scythe, plow, 
plane, etc. 

3. The analysis is carried to systems of ac- 
countings, to faulty methods of which many of 
the eleven thousand business failures per year are 
due, and great economies have resulted. 

4. Standardization of everything, in size and 
quality; business organizations reduced to types 
and patterns ; commissions formulate model laws 
for various communities ; even acts of incorpora- 
tion and city charters are modelized. 

5. In agriculture new efficiency is the goal, and 
a large literature, largely governmental, deals 
with methods for doubling or tripling crop yields, 
improving farm animals and bettering farm con- 
ditions generally. Hygiene associations are striv- 
ing towards increase of average length of life, 
thus increasing national efficiency, while medicine 
is striding towards a mastery of virulent con- 
tagious diseases. 

Making due allowance for the development of 
much fanaticism in this new movement, yet, dan- 



36 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

gerous as it might be to small minds, the great 
ideal of thought vitalizing work and work vitaliz- 
ing thought has tremendous potentialities and 
this culture movement is a large one and of great 
moral significance. It suggests to laboring men 
better ways of raising wages than by forcing them 
up by strikes and boycotts. It suggests to cor- 
porations the superiority of expanding by setting 
in order their house rather than depending upon 
special legislation, government appropriations, or 
a high tariff. It suggests to national, state, and 
municipal governments more effective ways of 
spending the people's money. It has brought 
new ideas of more effective armies. It has sug- 
gested betterment of the race by eugenics. It has 
forced attention to our human and financial wast- 
age in our public schools, and forced the colleges 
to ask why intensity of action in athletics is not 
paralleled in intellectual pursuits. It asks why 
school and church buildings lie unused so much. 
It has stimulated the organization of some half 
hundred or more types of child welfare move- 
ments, and many adult welfare organizations. It 
has admonished endowed institutions to more 
dutifully discharge public service responsibilities, 
and has suggested to faculties and students higher 



DOCTORS JAMES AND HALL 27 

standards of work, duty, and responsibility in 
learning and research. 

The lesson to draw from this revival in indus- 
trial, civic, and cultural circles is that we must 
take stock of our abilities, attainments, powers, 
and love of hard work. We must love severe toil 
till it becomes play. Intellectual workmen must 
realize that theirs is an artificial life and hence es- 
sentially unhealthful unless its devotees by train- 
ing and hygiene keep themselves at the top of 
condition as a necessary condition to the best 
work. Sin is dissipation and weakens accomplish- 
ment ; while chastity, temperance, honesty are dy- 
namic assets. The scholar to-day must read hard 
and much, with systematic training to prevent 
forgetting. A knowledge of such technique 
would make for great economy for brain workers 
and would tend towards larger results in the aca- 
demic field. 

To-day virtue is not enough ; we must eliminate 
the inefficiency of good men. We live below our 
highest level and we must learn to energize up to 
our maximum, — to break through at least the first 
fatigue barrier and in our second breath unlock 
the usually slumbering powers. We must throw 
off that which psychiatrists tell us is frequently 
the beginning of many psychic derangements, viz, 



28 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

the oppressive sense of inefficiency. It is not work 
but worry which breaks down, and worse yet is 
work without sufficient interest to vitalize, it. The 
powers and heritage of man's countless ancestors 
slumber in him, and to waken and put them to 
work is his problem. Superior ability is by no 
means rare though its development may be. We 
need to be aroused by some consuming interest. 
Many are the dynamogenic powers to awaken 
it; love, science, a new affection, a great idea, or 
even the looming prospect of death. 

The efficiency ideal even introduces new the- 
ories of culture. The best mental development 
accompanies close contact with real things, and 
in the realm of theory pragmatism becomes a 
large movement of efficiency. Impractical 
knowledge it would cast out ; knowledge must be 
humanistic ; the best school of theology is anthro- 
pology. 

Doctor Hall closes his address by presenting to 
the students the problem that confronts each, de- 
termining the way to best serve the human race 
really and efficiently, for service and efficiency 
form the clear call to young men made by the 
spirit of the times. 



DOCTORS JAMES AND HALL 39 

The great importance attaching to Doctor 
Hall's thesis lies in the fact that if by scientific 
management and study of industry we have al- 
ready increased the amount of work accomplished 
at the expenditure of the usual amount of energy 
or for the usual degree of fatigue, then by a tap- 
ping of the generally unused reservoirs of reserve 
energy, a further multiplication of effective re- 
sults will follow. But it is well to note that in 
much at least of the work already done towards 
greater efficiency man is treated largely as a ma- 
chine — lost motion taken up, speed increased. 
Without arousal of interest, domination of an 
idea, devotion to a cause, the reservoirs remain un- 
touched. Man is not merely a machine, though 
capable of purely mechanical work, and a soulless 
system efficiency is not calculated to arouse this 
far higher efficiency pointed to in Doctor Hall's 
address and hinted al by Doctor James. 



Chapter 2 
''Second Breath/' 

"Second breath," or "second wind," has been 
spoken of several times in the foregoing and it is 
well here to speak somewhat of this phenomenon. 
The best psychological treatment of it is doubt- 
less that of Doctor George E. Partridge in Peda- 
gogical Seminary for April, 1897 (volume 4, 
number 3 ) , of which we here present a short re- 
sume. 

The article is a presentation and analysis of re- 
turns from a questionnaire sent out by Doctor 
Hall in 1895, and contains data of the phenomena 
pertaining to both physical and mental erethism 
as observed in a number of young people particu- 
larly. 

The "catching of second breath" is observed in 
mental work (studying, etc.,) as well as in run- 
ning, rowing, and other physical efforts, in day 
as well as evening work. The ages of those mak- 
ing returns ran from eight to twenty-five, the ma- 
jority being from sixteen to twenty-two. 

In the cases of physical second breath a feeling 
of fatigue following exertion would, if the effort 
be kept up, be followed by an apparent recovery 



3t 



"SECOND BREATH" 31 

from the fatigue when the effort could be main- 
tained for an indefinite time. In one ease noted 
there was a succession of such fatiguing and re- 
covering. This periodicity was not noted in many 
cases. 

The cases of mental second breath were nearly 
all those of studying. One individual who worked 
days studied at nights, each time forcing himself 
past the initial line of fatigue. He reported con- 
tinuing this for a year. He found that eating or 
drinking before the fatigue period would cause 
drowsiness to come more quickly, making it more 
difficult to overcome the fatigue. The average 
time for sleep was four or five hours. His health 
was injured by the experience. 

In only eight of one hundred and sixty-eight 
cases did the change from fatigue to erethism 
come suddenly, — the change usually being grad- 
ual. Some stated that after the passing of the 
fatigue their work was better than before, while 
about an equal number thought their work after 
was equally as good as before. The length of 
time elapsing previous to and during fatigue was 
not specified. There was usually present a clear 
effort to push one's self past the fatigue period; 
a determination to finish, sticking to it, persever- 
ing, fear of examinations, etc. In the majority 



32 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

of cases there was noted and mentioned a distinct 
reaction, often continuing into the second day- 
after. 

Doctor Lombard in his experiments on the 
flexor muscle of the middle finger ascertained 
these periods of fatigue and recovery, — five times 
in twelve minutes. He believed the physiological 
action involved to be a complex of changes in the 
central nervous system. 

Doctor Cowles in his work on "Neurasthenia" 
treats this "second breath" as a pathological con- 
dition in which the true fatigue condition is not 
recorded by reason of the exhaustion of the fa- 
tigue sense. The true conditions of the body are 
not longer reported correctly. But Partridge re- 
marks that complete exhaustion of the fatigue 
sense in second breath phenomena is not evident. 
Fatigue can be felt for long periods when the oc- 
cupation stimulation is absent. It is, he thinks, a 
question of rising above the sense of fatigue, just 
as severe pain may be forgotten by closer concen- 
tration of the attention upon some other object. 

There is probably a close connection between 
the phenomenon of second breath and hyperaemia. 
Doctor Hammond describes in his work the symp- 
toms of hyperaemia from various causes (among 
which emotional disturbances lead), the subjec- 



"SECOND BREATH" 33 

tive symptoms being similar to those of second 
breath; fullness in the head, flushed face, quick- 
ened breathing and heart beats. Among mu- 
sicians it is held that best singing is done at night 
rather than in the morning. Athletes 'Svarm up" 
by getting an increased flow of blood. 

Emotion plays an important part in prompt- 
ing the continuation which brings into play sec- 
ond breath. The part played by emotion in blood 
circulation in the brain has been pointed out by 
Mosso. Even pain may be a spur to the nervous 
system. In many religious cults pain has thus 
played an important role in raising the organism 
to states of intoxication and ecstasy. Flagella- 
tions and martyrdoms are evidences. 

The subjective stages of fatigue and recovery 
Partridge gives as follows: 1. Feeling of exhaus- 
tion and pain, with duninished muscular activity. 
2. Intensification of emotional tone; fear, anxiety, 
rivalry, prompting continuance. 3. Feeling of 
increasing power, with sometimes a feeling of 
pleasure in the pain and in overcoming it. 4. 
Cessation of pain, absorption in work, feeling of 
increased power and momentum. 

From the cases studied by Partridge physical 
erethism appeared to be less disturbing than men- 
tal. The relation between erethism and absorp- 



34 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

tion states is close, and between these and hyp- 
nosis, trances, ecstacy, there is also a close 
relation. 

This subject of second breath is closely bound 
up with that of fatigue, which we shall briefly ex- 
amine in another section of this paper. 



Chapter 3 
Alcoholism. 

It will have been noted that Doctor James 
brought into his discussion of the energies of men 
the question of alcoholic and narcotic stimulation, 
for which he was in some quarters roundly cen- 
sured as an advocate of ''sprees" and intoxicating 
beverages as stimulators of activity, especially 
in emergencies. If an attempt by a so widely 
known scientist to examine facts observed in con- 
nection with well authenticated incidents subjects 
him to such severe and overdone criticism by zeal- 
ous but perhaps unwise and unfair devotees to 
the cause of temperance, it is scarcely to be hoped 
that a less lucid writer than Doctor James will 
escape being misunderstood and his language 
made to apply where not intended. But alcohol- 
ism, "intemperance," "drunkenness," intoxica- 



ALCOHOLISM 35 

tion, narcosis, have played and do still play so 
prominent a part in the history of human affairs 
that a consideration of them must have some place 
in a discussion of the subject matter of this paper, 
whether it is held that they play a direct role in 
arousing the higher activities of men or only in 
a negative way exercise an influence. 

Much has been written on the general subject 
of alcoholism, but for the purposes of this paper 
it will be necessary to give attention to only two 
articles, both by psychologists; one a paper by 
Doctor G. E. Partridge on "The Psychology of 
Intemperance"; the other by Doctor G. T. Pat- 
rick on "In Quest of the Alcohol Motive," of 
which we here present epitomes. 

Partridge's ''Psychology of Intemijerancef' 

The problem in the psychology of intemper- 
ance is at bottom to find the nature of the impulse 
to use intoxicants. To determine the nature of 
the impulse to use intoxicants is important not 
alone from the standpoint of scientific psychol- 
ogy, but as a basis on which to determine control 
of intemperance. The voice of science must be 
heard on this great moral and social question as 
well as on all others. The persistence of the im- 
pulses to intemperance indicates a deep-seated 



36 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

basis in the history of the human mind. It is 
necessary also to understand v/hat it is that is 
craved. The strict scientific attitude would deal 
only with determination of facts, but closely as- 
sociated therewith is the tendency to evaluate. 
This may have tended to a misunderstanding of 
some of the problems connected with intemper- 
ance. 

Geneticism assumes that all deep-seated mental 
traits have their origin in animal life, those more 
lately acquired, of course, going back a shorter 
way for their roots, though their predecessors may 
be determined. Even religion genetically studied 
has been found to have its roots in fear and primi- 
tive love. It might be well therefore to ask. Do 
animals undergo the effects of stimulants and in- 
toxicants as do men, do they acquire the habit of 
intoxication, and does the acquirement of these 
habits bear a definite relation to the general, use- 
ful activities of the animal? Animal psychology 
has as yet not much to offer. There is, hoAvever, 
evidence that large doses of alcohol affect many 
species much the same, — an increased activity be- 
ing followed by decreased activity. Some insects 
(e. g. wasp) become intoxicated by overripe 
juices. Whether or not animals acquire a craving 



ALCOHOLISM BT 

for such intoxicants is difficult to say, though they 
may have formed a habit. 

Among the many problems presented by ani- 
mal psychology in this connection, it is well to re- 
member that whenever a habit or particular form 
of activity has been acquired in man or animal it 
indicates a practical root ; and when we trace the 
higher emotions of man back to their beginnings 
they are usually found to be connected with the 
perpetuity of the race or the preservation of the 
individual, or both. 

Intoxication among primitive peoples has 
played an important role, and the custom is prob- 
ably poly genetic. Alcohol has been a great factor 
in the mental, religious, social life of the people. 
Endless myths, rites, ceremonies, and supersti- 
tions have crystallized about the use of intoxi- 
cants. Excitement has been considered often as 
essential to religious feeling, and many methods 
have been employed to induce this excitement, in- 
toxication being one. "It is a long way from the 
ancient soma worship, in which all the devotees of 
Indra became intoxicated to please the god, to 
our own solemn sacrament of the communion, yet 
none of the transitional steps are lacking; and 
psychologically at least this sacrament must be 



38 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

supposed to have a deep ancestral root in primi- 
tive intoxication rites." (P. 25.) 

Many American Indians use the mescal button 
in their religious ceremonies. The Pueblos be- 
come intoxicated in some of their religious cere- 
monies, while at least one of the sacred festivals 
of the Yakuts is only an elaborate drinking cere- 
mony. The Ainos of Japan and the Polynesians 
drink to the gods, while with the Fijians prayers 
or chants accompany the drinking. The Pata- 
gonians stress intoxication in religious ceremo- 
nies. Tobacco among the American Indians is 
quite common in religious and solemn ceremo- 
nies. The excitement of the Shaman is frequently 
augmented by the use of intoxicants. Many 
other instances could be cited. 

Much of the evidence indicated a social and re- 
ligious origin for intoxication. Very few tribes 
of primitive peoples have been found in which 
some form of intoxicant was not used. 

Among primitive peoples the tendency to enter 
states of abandonment is deep-seated and in prac- 
tically all states of excitement, whatever may be 
the method of producing them, the tendency is to 
carry the state to a breaking point. This is illus- 
trated as well by the dance as intoxication. 

A comparison may here be made between the 



ALCOHOLISM 39 

intoxication habits of the primitive and the child. 
In both there seems to be the craving for the 
ecstatic states. The capacity for states of tensity 
may be increased at puberty. This period may 
be characterized as one of intoxication. 

Among civihzed nations, according to Samuel- 
son, there has always been a period of prevalent 
intoxication just previous to and again just after 
the attainment of highest culture. This is a nat- 
ural outcome of decadence in national spirit ac- 
companied usually by widespread pessimism in 
religion and other interests. Greece in the 
Dionysiac cults presents a good example of a re- 
ligion developing from the intoxication impulse. 

The work of the Renaissance was to revive 
emotions as well as learning, and with the awak- 
ening of the emotions came in man a conscious- 
ness of his powers, and confidence in his powers 
brought a feeling of freedom. There was a 
change from outer to inner control, with no con- 
trol at all during the transition. In strong and 
dominant races there is also a strong craving for 
excitement tending towards intemperance, as for 
example, the ancestors of the Saxon races. 

Besides this impulse for intoxicants indicating 
a craving for pleasure and larger activity, there 
is also the narcotic impulse, which seems to be a 



40 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

craving for rest, associated with relaxation, recre- 
ation, etc. Stimulants center the attention on the 
future while narcosis is self- and past-centered. 
Pain spurs the nervous system on; and attempts 
to gain surcease from pain by entering the dream 
world of narcosis, is an expression of a longing 
backward. 

In a society of growing complexity the intoxi- 
cation impulse is far from a single one. This is 
particularly true of our own national life, where 
we have a most intricate mingling of classes. 

Here again the comparison between the race 
development and that of the individual may be 
made. As the race in the Renaissance passed 
from an outer to an inner control, so does the indi- 
vidual at adolescence become a complete individ- 
ual where the newly arising forces confused and 
uncoordinated gradually give way to the guiding 
force of purpose which molds the career of the 
adult. There may be a period when in the transi- 
tion from the outer to the inner control there is 
not control at all, and the life is torn by in- 
temperance when there is danger of the lower 
forms of intoxication becoming dominant and 
persistent. 

The fact that drinking is more frequent among 
all peoples among men than women may be ac- 



ALCOHOLISM 41 

counted for by temperamental sex differences. 
Physiologically the male may be described as 
katabolic, the female anabolic. Among primitive 
peoples the occupations requiring intense activity 
alternating with periods of comparative inactivity 
usually belong to the males, the steady occupa- 
tions of monotony and repetition being taken 
over by the women. Work normally consumes 
at least in part the capacity and desires for ex- 
citement and erethic states. This even control 
removed there is likely to recur the old erethic 
rhythms. Woman is more likely to be injured 
by erethic activities, hence her motive for nar- 
cotics is more likely to be pain than craving for 
excitement. 

All strong motives have left their trace upon 
literature ; and so it has been with the intoxication 
impulses. A very large number of terms to in- 
dicate states of intoxication have been collected. 
A frequent theme in primitive philosophies is 
the origin of wine. In literature two gre^t 
themes ap]3ear as the intoxication motive, intoxi- 
cation and narcosis ; while in medicine the intoxi- 
cation impulse has left its impress in the doctrine 
of stimulus. 

( It is not necessary here to incorporate a sum- 
mary of the chapter on Mental and Physical Ef- 



42 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

fects, as that has been pretty well covered in the 
summary of Patrick's article, elsewhere ex- 
amined. ) 

Alcoholic intoxication is essentially an exal- 
tation of feeling followed by a depression. In 
the state of exaltation there is experienced a 
sense of a more abundant life and a loosening of 
control of external forces. Life seems richer, a 
sense of lost control is felt, and the mind feels 
itself free from the usual inhibitions. It is this 
feeling of freedom and expansion which is sought 
by the individual in intoxication. The physiologi- 
cal processes forming a basis for this change in 
the mental states are not well determined. The 
stimulating effects may be from a loosening of 
lower mechanisms by an inhibition of the higher. 

Two types of a general character favor the for- 
mation of morbid use of alcohol: (1) the unde- 
veloped type, and (2) the degenerate (nervously 
morbid). 

A study of inebriety shows that one of the mo- 
tives of alcoholic excess springs from a normal 
yet universal desire for the largest and intensest 
life. It is established as excess by abnormal de- 
velopment from inner or outer defect, or both. 

In the majority of cases studied, there is little 
physical craving for alcohol. The habit is social, 



ALCOHOLISM 43 

though chronic craving may be thought to exist 
in cases where general fatigue and distress are 
mistaken for the need of alcohol. The craving 
is found to be strongest during the most active 
decades of life. 

The narcotic motive seems to enter when in- 
terest in life begins to decline, an instinctive old- 
age desire for relief from pain. 

From the foregoing resume of Doctor Par- 
tridge's article it will be seen that according to his 
theory of the alcohol motive alcoholism function- 
izes as a factor in freeing the energies of men be- 
cause under the influence of alcohol there is 
aroused a sense of power enjoyed by the inebri- 
ated individual at certain stages of intoxication 
— the feeling of an expanded self — an exaltation, 
from which euphoristic feeling a stimulation to- 
wards higher activities and greater energizing 
is derived. 



From quite a different angle is the problem ap- 
proached by Doctor Patrick. 



44 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Doctor Patrick's ''Quest of the Alcohol Motive/' 

Among few savage tribes known to anthro- 
pologists is the use of alcohol or an equivalent un- 
known. Its discovery and use appears to have 
been autochthonic rather than having spread, 
the various methods of expressing from fruits, 
grains, or vegetables having been developed in- 
dependently in the keen quest for alcohol and its 
results. 

What desire has motivated it? 

In our own and other civilized countries, de- 



Period 


Gals, per 
capita 


Period 


Gals, per 
capita 


1850 


4.08 


1899 


16.82 


1860 


6.43 


1900 


17.76 


1870 


7.70 


1901 


17.65 


1871-80 


8.79 


1902 


19.14 


1881-90 


13.21 


1903 


19.57 


1891 


16.72 


1904 


19.87 


1892 


17.13 


1905 


19.85 


1893 


18.20 


1906 


21.55 


1894 


16.98 


1907 


22.79 


1895 


16.57 


1908 


22.22 


1896 


17.12 


1900 


21.06 


1897 


16.50 


1901 


21.86 


1898 


17.37 


1902 


22.79 



spite the enormous sums of money spent in oppos- 
ing the spread of its use and manufacture, its use 
increases constantly, as shown by the preceding 
table of per capita consumption of alcoholic bev- 



ALCOHOLISM . 45 

erages, the figures being from the Internal Reve- 
nue office : 

Efforts to limit the sale of intoxicants have un- 
doubtedly kept these figures from mounting to 
higher proportions. The cost to the German peo- 
ple for intoxicating beverages about equals that 
for meat, fish, and fowl combined, and seven 
eighths as much as for bread, meal, bakery goods, 
and potatoes combined: while in the United 
States the annual wholesale value of vinous, malt, 
and distilled liquors about equals that of our en- 
tire wheat crop. The additional cost of imported 
liquors and those distilled illicitly would greatly 
increase the cost of our annual drink bill. 

That to humanity alcohol holds great interest 
is evidenced by the fact that language is rich in 
synonyms for intoxication, Partridge having 
compiled some three hundred and seventy words 
and phrases in English and stating that some six 
hundred had been collected in German, whSle 
poetry has in every age sung the praises of wine. 
Religious ceremonies in which alcohol or intoxi- 
cation play a part are frequent, while legislative 
enactments looking towards stopping or checking 
the use of intoxicants would fill volumes. 

The psychologist is confronted with the task 
of determining the alcohol motive as a contribu- 



46 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

tion towards solving the social problems connected 
therewith. A scientific investigation of the effect 
of alcohol on the body and mind is the first step. 
Recently this has been studied with small doses 
as the basis, yielding the following important con- 
clusions: 1. To the presence of ethyl alcohol in 
intoxicating beverages is due the desire therefor. 
2. It is not desired because of its food value, re- 
cent investigations showing that it has none. 3. 
It is not a stimulant, as formerly believed, but is 
on the other hand a depressant upon all forms of 
organic life from the complex nervous structures 
of the human brain down to the simplest micro- 
organisms. But were it a stimulant, as formerly 
held and still held by some, it would not answer 
the question of why a desire which is so nearly 
universal, when stimulants would only answer un- 
der abnormal conditions. 4. It does not increase 
muscular efiiciency. Experiments made by War- 
ren, Frey, Schnyder, Destree, Tavernari, Kraep- 
elin, Fere, Partridge, Hivers, and others, using 
the ergograph and other dynamometers to show 
the muscular effects of small doses, showed a 
slight increase at first, followed by a decrease. 
Larger doses showed larger decrease in efficiency. 
Later Rivers and Webber, using a control drink 
so the presence of alcohol was not known to the 



ALCOHOLISM 47 

subject, found the momentary initial increase ab- 
sent. They thought thereby that suggestion had 
something to do with the result of former experi- 
ments. There is some ground for believing that 
alcohol shortens reaction time, though it has not 
been shown that this is any advantage. Kraepe- 
lin's conclusion is that the laboring man who uses 
alcohol is attacking the very foundation of his ef- 
ficiency. Hodge, experimenting with retrieving 
dogs, found the alcoholized dogs did one half as 
much work as the normal ones. Durig's experi- 
ments in mountain climbing showed that a de- 
crease of twenty per cent in efficiency followed 
moderate doses of alcohol. 5. Alcohol, accord- 
ing to the experiments of Kraepelin and his 
associates, deadened all mental processes. The 
experiments of Schnidman in language trans- 
lation. Lieutenant Boy upon Swedish soldier 
riflemen, Mayer in writing speeds, Aschaffen- 
burg with * typesetters, Smith with memory 
processes, Furer in choice-reactions, with the 
subjects taking small doses of alcohol, all 
found the efficiency impaired. It may be safely 
said, therefore, that the desire for alcohol does 
not lie in the increased efficiency. Helmholtz on 
his seventieth birthday, in a speech in Berlin said 
that the smallest amount of alcohol frightened 



48 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

from him his best intuitions, that his brightest 
were when the freest from alcohol. 

It was formerly held that alcohol had thera- 
peutic value ; but more recent investigation shows 
that it is not a cure for disease but a cause of dis- 
ease. It acts as a toxin to higher organisms and 
its moderate use breaks down the power of resist- 
ance to disease, while excessive use develops a 
long list of diseases. 

Alcohol does not contribute to longevity, but 
on the other hand, as has been found by insurance 
companies after long and careful research, the 
abstainers have a better chance for long life. 

While alcohol encourages sociability, yet this 
does not seem at all proportional to the desire for 
it ; furthermore, its use is followed by a long list 
of social evils, as poverty, crime, racial degener- 
acy ; and while these come only from immoderate 
use, yet the charge can be well laid that its moder- 
ate continued use is likely to lead to its immoder- 
ate use, and so to the evils thereof. 

Besides the foregoing facts it must yet be noted 
that the desire for alcohol is common to both civi- 
lized and uncivilized man, tends to increase in 
spite of opposition, has reached an unparalleled 
intensity in present prosperous and rich commu- 
nities, is strong among the plodding underpaid 



ALCOHOLISM 49 

laborers of manufacturing and industrial centers, 
is stronger in the northern progressive peoples 
than among the southern, is stronger among the 
adult males than among women and children, and 
is not an apj)etite in the ordinary sense, as it an- 
swers no inner need of the body. 

The desire for alcohol ma}^ be explained on the 
ground of its immediate effects on mental pleas- 
ures. It deadens pain, banishes care, produces 
euphoria; it may temporarily remove or alleviate 
fatigue, fear, anxiety, and to some extent physical 
pain. But this explanation encounters difficul- 
ties. Nonalcoholic joys were never more numer- 
ous; rich and poor have better opportunities for 
pleasure. Psychologically it is understood that 
joy and pleasure are the mental concomitants of 
physical well-being, while alcohol is toxic to or- 
ganisms. While the joys of alcohol are apparent, 
as are also the injurious effects, the "demand for 
joy" theory as an explanation of the desire for 
alcohol is too superficial. We must look deeper. 

The narcotic theory, that it acts as a sedative 
or anesthetic, fails as an explanation to account 
for its lesser desire among women, who have their 
share of pain. This theory would answer only 
in times of national decay or general degeneracy. 
Nordau presents the narcotic theory and holds the 



50 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

present time to be one of degeneracy, while Par- 
tridge acknowledges the narcotic motive as an ele- 
ment and thinks it betokens "old age and disease 
in a nation." That the desire exists more 
strongly in times of great national vigor argues 
against this theory. 

Reid has advanced the theory that this desire 
is an evolutionary by-product, coextensive with 
mankind and harmful in its results, to be met only 
by natural selection eliminating those with whom 
the desire prevails. 

Partridge finding in the narcotic motive desire 
to escape from pain, to find in activity relief from 
the strenuous life, thinks the intoxications mo- 
tive is still more important, springing from a de- 
sire for higher states of consciousness, exaltation, 
more abundant life, freedom, expansion, — the 
erethic impulse or craving for excitement. But 
alcohol contributes to a less abundant life, pro- 
duces lower states of tension, and for this very 
reason, as we shall see later, is desired. 

A satisfactory theory for the alcohol desire 
must be well grounded in an accurate knowledge 
of the whole history of man, especially his mental 
development, of the action of alcohol on the brain ; 
and in the absence of all this only tentative theory 
can be advanced. 



ALCOHOLISM 51 

Man is differentiated from lower animals by 
the development of certain mental powers, chief 
among which is the power of voluntary sustained 
attention. The subjective correlate of psycho- 
logical and phj^siological progress is tension. To- 
wards the enlargement of the necessary cortical 
brain centers the "will to live" or some "vital im- 
pulse" is constantly driving us. These newer 
cortical centers, higher than the others, are more 
easily fatigued and hence need more rest, part of 
which is secured in sleep when the lower centers 
are active, and partly through activities in which 
other and lower centers are brought into play. 
These activities are called relaxation, and play 
an important part in our daily life. The best ex- 
amples are in children's plays and in adult sports. 
The plays of children are reversionary, are self- 
developing, and supply their own interest. So in 
adult sports, the most relaxing and restful are 
those which use old racial brain paths and rest 
higher ones, like hunting, swimming, fishing, 
dancing, etc. 

But early was there discovered artificial means 
of relaxation, through drugs. Ethyl alcohol, pro- 
duced where the sugar of fruits or grains comes 
in contact with the yeast cells, has the property 
of paralyzing to a greater or lesser degree the 



53 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

later developed and higher brain tracts so much 
used in the strenuous mental life. Thus does it 
afford relaxation, turning the brain energy into 
lower and older channels while the higher rest 
under the narcotic. Not that the toxic effect of 
the alcohol is selective, but because those portions 
of the brain having least resisting power come 
first under its influence, though the depressive 
effect is felt by the lower reflex centers, raising 
the threshold value of the reflex arc, thus dimin- 
ishing reflex excitability. 

Thus alcohol appears as a depressant of the 
higher forms of mental activity, acting indirectly 
as a stimulant of the lower by transferring tlie 
brain energy into lower channels, though under 
progressive alcoholic influence the older and more 
basic impulses are loosened until coarsenes.*^ and 
even criminal tendencies may be reached. That 
is to say, the whole human racial history is tra- 
versed in reverse direction. Physiologically 
and psychologically, then, the desire for alcohol 
may be termed an expression of a demand for re- 
lease from the strenuous life, by strenuous being 
meant any condition of unrelieved tension — in 
the high pressure life of our cities or the unre- 
lieved toil of the industrial laborer. Even the 
life of the savage is tense as compared with the 



ALCOHOLISM 53 

lower animals, while the greater tension of higher 
life accounts for the increasing demand for alco- 
hol. 

We thus see why the use of alcohol follows the 
law of rh3^thm. .The need for relaxation is cumu- 
lative. And it thus appears that the effect of al- 
cohol is in the nature of a catharsis. Efficiency, 
the cry of the age, demands more efficiency, and 
the desire for alcohol is the demand for rest, — re- 
lease from tension. 

But unfortunately the relaxation brought 
about by alcohol is at a price. Play and sport are 
relaxing and recreative, while alcohol is relaxing 
and destructive, for in its train as a poison there 
is a heavy balance of damage to individual and 
society. The lack of intellectual progress be- 
moaned by Gladstone may be due in part at least 
to meddling with ethyl alcohol. 

Briefly stated, according to Doctor Patrick the 
alcohol motive is found in the desire for relief 
from the tension which is a correlate of intellec- 
tual progress, the tension becoming greater as 
men live more nearly up to the limit of the lat- 
terly acquired capacities, alcoholic intoxication 
affording artificial relaxation and at least tem- 
porary relief from the fatigue resultant upon sus- 



54 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

tained use of the higher faculties. This theory of 
the alcohol motive would bring it close to, if not 
into identity with the play motive. 

Unless it be possible to harmonize these two 
theories as each contributing towards the same 
end, it will be necessary to re j ect one or both, for 
as set out by their respective authors they are out 
of agreement. Doctor Hall thinks there is not a 
real opposition between the two, holding that it is 
a question of incidence of erethism.' 

If we assume that erethism is present in alco- 
holic intoxication then it is a question of inci- 
dence, and the form of activity assumed as a re- 
sult of the erethism is merely a question of what 
one of the older motor patterns is activated 
thereby. But it may as well be a question of 
erethism itself as one of incidence of erethism. 
In other words, Is alcoholic intoxication artificial 
second breath, or artificial ecstasy? Second 
breath in the intellectual realm turns the ere- 
thism to the neopalium or more lately acquired 
activities, and hence becomes a stimulator of 
higher powers. In alcoholism, does the erethism 
(if there be erethism) ever fall upon the highest 
centers ? 



Private correspondence. 



ALCOHOLISM 55 

Sergi's conception of the human character 
being built up by successive layers, the most re- 
cently acquired lying uppermost, is generally ac- 
cepted by psychologists. The activities centering 
in the more recently acquired layers have motor 
patterns less stable, and fatigue is more quickly 
reached by their use. Tension is less severe in 
the older, deeper lying ones. Hence the relax- 
ation in play, sports, etc. 

The power of sustained attention marks the 
superiority of man, of some men over others. At- 
tention may be sustained upon one thing, one 
point, for a time. Under certain conditions there 
may be a limitation of consciousness upon a 
single point, brought about by a suppression of 
the functions of the centers of inhibition, when 
the whole psychical energy is for the time cen- 
tered upon this single point, which may be a sen- 
sation, a thought, an idea. This is the ecstatic 
state which we discuss in another part of this trea- 
tise. Because of the concentration of the whole 
psychical energy upon the one point, there is a 
heightening of functions in this direction, be- 
cause nervous energy is transferred from other 
nerve paths and converge upon the one. 

The psychological conditions arising from al- 
coholic intoxication present a picture in some 



56 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

ways quite similar to that of ecstasy. The 
similarity is likely to result in erroneous conclu- 
sions unless one important difference is noted. 
There is lacking that one central focus of atten- 
tion which in ecstasy receives all the power and 
intensity of which the personality is capable. 
One thing after another comes into conscious- 
ness in its own right by reason of higher centers 
of activity being paralyzed; it is not a conver- 
gence of psychic nerve stream but a shutting off 
of some. 

More recent investigations of alcoholic intoxi- 
cation indicate that it takes place as a progres- 
sive paralysis, proceeding from the more recently 
acquired psychic layers downward to the older 
and better established ones. There is a gradual 
descent into the depths of animal sensation and 
action by a suppression first of the results of 
personal self-education, then family traditions, 
and lastly the cultural acquisitions of centuries. 
(Segaloff in Zeitschrift filr Psychotherapie und 
Bledkenische Psychologie, III Band (1911) S. 
289.) The course, then, of the psychic retro- 
gression due to the progressive paralysis of the 
mental characteristics depends upon the psychi- 
cal life of the individual and his forbears. The 
poorer and narrower has been his mental heritage 



ALCOHOLISM 57 

and development, the more sharply and quickly 
will the characteristics of the prehistoric and pre- 
cultural beastlike life make their appearance.^ 

In ecstasy there is erethism because of a con- 
vergence of psychic power upon a single point 
with not a paralysis of the other psychic func- 
tions but simply a withdrawal of attention from 
them. In alcoholic intoxication certain psychic 
functions come to the forefront of conscious- 
ness, not because of an erethic enlargement 
thereof, but because of a paralysis of other func- 
tions through the effects of the poison. In fact, 
the functioning of the psychic activity in con- 
sciousness is in all probability asthenic because 
of a general lessening of the flow of nervous 
energy. To be sure, the motor patterns are in 
the older and better established centers, and a 
less than normal functioning might produce a 
feeling of euphoria because of a deadening of 
the fatigue or pain or neurasthenic sense centers. 
Hence the feeling of expanded self or enlarged 
powers felt by the drunken man is not due to ere- 
thism or second breath, but to a relaxation re- 
sulting from paralysis of the higher, stronger 
tension producing centers. 



^Segaloff, cited above. 



r>H UKWIKH POVViaiS OI^' MAN 

It is interesting- in iliis eonneetion to note a 
pen pietnre of this elfeet ol* iileohol, taken from 
Andrejeff's novel, "Tma," and quoted by Sega- 
loff in the artiele referred to above: 

"lie had been (h'inking mueh })ut was not 
drunk {hrrausrlit) ; something different was liap- 
l)ening in liis soul, sometliing whieli not infre- 
(juently the strong mysterious aleohol effected. 
It was as though wliile he drank in silence, there 
was going on within hmi rapidly and mutely a 
great and destructive woi'k. It was as if every- 
thing which he in tlie course of his life had ex- 
perienced, loved, and planned {durchdacht) , con- 
versations with friends and fellows, books which 
had been read, dangerous and seductive activi- 
ties, all were silently consumed and destroyed 
without leaving a trace; but through it all he him- 
self was not destroyed, but became stronger and 
more severe. It Avas as though with every addi- 
tional glass of spirits he reverted to his primi- 
tive cause, to grandfather, great-grandfather, to 
those elementary original seditionaries, for whom 
sedition was rcHgion and religion was sedition, 
liike fading colors under hot water, strange 
book-lore dissolved and paled and in its place 
arose something peculiar (Eii^'ciics) , wihl and 
dark, like the voice of the black earth. And wild 



KC^STASY 59 

men, boundless expanses, primeval forests and 
fields drifted {wehtcn) from this last dark wis- 
dom; to be heard in it were the cries of frantic 
bells, to be seen in it was the blood-red of flaring 
flames, and the clatter of iron chains and the ter- 
rified flight and the Satanic laughter of a thou- 
sand giant throats, and high above the un- 
covered head the black sky." 



Chapter 4 
Ecstasy. 

The fundamental position which in this treatise 
is given to ecstasy and the ecstatic state in cer- 
tain of its aspects as a factor contributing 
towards calling into action the higher powers of 
man, justifies a somewhat lengthy examination of 
its psychological moment, though of necessity its 
discussion must be limited by the em])hasis being 
laid u})()n certain fields of its activity. 

From a Greek word meaning a putting out of 
place, a displacement, a derangement, it is by 
dictionaries given such a variety of definitions as 
clearly to indicate that it is a word loosely used. 
Webster defines it, first as "the state of being be- 
side one's self or rapt out of one's self; a state 



60 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

in which the mind is elevated above the reach of 
ordinary impressions, as when under the influence 
of overpowering emotions; an extraordinary 
elevation of the spirit, as when the soul, uncon- 
scious of sensible objects, is supposed to contem- 
plate heavenly mysteries"; and, second, as "ex- 
cessive and overmastering joy or enthusiasm, 
rapture, enthusiastic delight." A third he gives 
as obsolete, while his fourth, or medical definition 
is given as "a state which consists in total suspen- 
sion of sensibility, of voluntary motion, and 
largely of mental power. The body is erect and 
inflexible; the pulsation and breathing are not 
affected." 

Among medical writers much confusion in the 
use of the word exists, as it is quite differently em- 
ployed by various writers. Tuke's Dictionary of 
Psychological Medicine says that the word ec- 
stasy is "usually restricted to that condition of the 
system in which a person presents opposite phases 
of mental action, some faculties being exalted and 
others depressed ; sensation and locomotion being 
suspended. It is so allied to catalepsy that the 
term 'cataleptic ecstasy' is often employed: as 
also is that of 'ecstatic trance' With ecstasy we 
always associate the idea of something more than 
immobility and the loss of objective conscious- 



ECSTASY 61 

ness, namely, the impassioned attitude of the pa- 
tient, whether sitting or standing, the eyes being 
fixed and open, with or without utterances of a re- 
ligious or enthusiastic character. The whole mind 
seems to be absorbed and concentrated upon some 
grand idea, especially of a supernatural charac- 
ter. . . . Mystics in all ages have been more or 
less examples of this neurosis." 

From the foregoing quoted definitions, it will 
readily be seen how loosely the word is employed. 
A good general definition is that given by Bald- 
win in his "Dictionary of Philosophy and Psy- 
chology" : "A condition of the nervous system and 
mind characterized by immobility, suspension of 
normal sensory and motor functions, and rapt 
concentration upon a limited group of ideas. It 
is particularly characteristic of various forms of 
religious absorption." 

From Tuke's definition it is clear that he holds 
ecstasy to be a pathological condition. Ecstasy 
has played an important role in human affairs, 
particularly the religious, and it is scarcely stat- 
ing the matter fairly to hold that it is always 
associated with the pathological. Ecstasy is the 
central experience of religious experiences usually 
associated with mysticism. Not alone religious 



62 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

ideas, but any much desired thing may become 
the object of ecstasy. 

Among the best treatises on ecstasy still stands 
that of Montegazza, the Italian psychologist, 
though written some years ago. We shall here 
present an epitome of his work, or such of it as 
appears to have bearing on our sub j ect. We take 
it from the German translation, ''Ekstasen des 
Menschen/' 

As usually applied the term ecstasy refers to 
the "more than highest" conditions of pleasure, 
inspiration, and the boldest flights of thought. 
But the ecstasy here dealt with refers more to *'a 
hypnotism of the emotions and of the thoughts," 
more often of the first than the last. The ecstasy 
bordering on drunkenness, hallucination, som- 
nambulism, delirium, catalepsy, is an exceptional 
condition, is transitory, and rather rare. 

Hypnotism is an artificial sleep, more or less 
deep, during which part of the brain functions are 
suspended while others are extraordinarily stimu- 
lated. Hypnotism is developed by fixity of gaze 
on glistening object, magnetic strokes, continu- 
ous and uniform noise, the sound of tuning fork, 
etc. In ecstasy, on the other hand, we do not have 
an outer sensation and a unilateral excess of the 



ECSTASY 63 

functions of thought or of an emotion through 
which all other brain functions are suspended so 
that consciousness directed within absorbs itself 
in the indefinite and indefinable power of a domi- 
nant feeling or a thought. Quite generally this 
exaltation and the condensation of mental powers 
upon a single point is accompanied by a great 
pleasure sensation; and therefore has the word 
ecstasy been applied to the voluptuousness of love 
or an ecstatic pleasure carried to an extreme. But 
it is too fugaciously ecstatic if at all to be included 
in real ecstasy. 

The close relation of the physiological proc- 
esses, ecstasy and hypnotism, the first being a 
higher form of the latter, calls for a look at the 
latter. Doctor Liebault has distinguished in hyp- 
notism five stages: (1) Stupor; blunting of the 
senses. (2) Light sleep, in which the one hypno- 
tized still hears what is spoken to him. (3) 
Deeper sleep ; nothing is remembered of what has 
been said or done or heard, yet always retaining 
relation to the present as well as with the hypno- 
tizer. (4) Very deep sleep, in which the hypno- 
tized is entirely separated from the outer world 
and retains relations only with the hypnotizer. 
(5) Somnambulism. 

Liebault and many others explain hypnotism 



64 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

as due to tensed attention with concentration of 
thought, while Durand de Gros holds the essen- 
tial characteristic moment of hypnotism to be that 
it limits activity to a minimum and reduces work 
to its simplest expression. Hence the brain is 
subjected to exclusive stimulation of a simple, 
uniform, continuous sensation, bringing about a 
suppression of mental activity except in a single 
direction ; but the unused nerve force heaps up in 
the brain, resulting in a nervous congestion. The 
accumulated nerve force can transfer itself to one 
or another path, upon one or another nerve, or 
sense organ, whose activity is thus markedly aug- 
mented, the direction of transfer being governed 
by the suggestion of the hypnotizer. 

As in hypnotism a portion of the brain is 
isolated by overstimulation while functions of 
other parts are suppressed, so in ecstasy, by in- 
tensive fixation of thought there is concentration 
upon a single desire, a single feeling, all mental 
powers upon a single point ; and so enter the phe- 
nomena of hypnotism, such as catalepsy, halluci- 
nation, anesthesia, etc. Of our five senses those 
which are the most closely allied with thought 
and feeling bring about ecstasy; namely, sight 
and hearing. The feeling perceptions reach this 
goal only when closely related to the sex instincts. 



ECSTASY 65 

But pleasurable sensations and ecstasy are closely 
related; and one who has once experienced the 
pleasure of ecstasy values it above other joys and 
is prone to recall it often. 

Intoxication stands in close relation to ecstasy 
and has characteristics in common with it, but not 
every kind of intoxication. In alcoholic intoxi- 
cation the disorderly tumult of the psychical 
elements, together with the centrifugal manifes- 
tations of nervous life, prevent the inner concen- 
tration without centrifugal expression which is 
necessary to ecstasy. In ecstasy exalted con- 
sciousness is focused on a single psychical point; 
in alcoholic intoxication consciousness is first dis- 
turbed, then lost entirely. 

Narcotic intoxication is most closely related to 
ecstasy, in some forms strikingly so. It is chemi- 
cal ecstasy^ while ecstasy might be termed psychi- 
cal narcosis. In both there is isolation of the 
outer world, anesthesia, hallucination, visions, 
and even catalepsy, and there is absorption of the 
I in contemplation of the mental pictures. No 
one so resembles a Dervisher in ecstasy as a Bo- 
livian coco-chewer or an Indian opium smoker. 

A fool, a lover, and an opium smoker may ex- 
hibit similar symptoms, though the causes are 
quite different, and histology may some day tell 



66 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

US why nerves come under the same influence 
from mental aberration, from love, and from 
opium. Goethe has said: "Youth is drunkenness 
without wine"; and of ecstasy it may be said, "It 
is narcosis without opium, hasheesh or coco." 

Definite nervous conditions on the one hand 
and external influences on the other are essential 
for ecstasy. One may be naturally and extremely 
ecstastic without once experiencing or surmising 
what ecstasy is. Of the two, the nervous system 
and the environment, the first is more important. 
Environment can change the form of ecstasy. 
There have been several historic periods favorable 
for awakening ecstasy and turning it in certain 
directions. 

Of the conditions essential for ecstas}^ the in- 
born are continuous ; the others temporary, hence 
transient. Few are the unfortunates who at no 
time have experienced at least the twilight condi- 
tions of some kind of ecstasy. 

The progressive development is schematically 
as follows: 

1. Concentration of attention upon a single 
point of consciousness — a sensation, a thought, 
or a thrilling feeling. 

2. Gradually lessened functioning of all other 



ECSTASY 67 

sensations, all other thoughts, all other previous 
or present feelings. 

3. A tumultuous, sudden, gushing confluence 
of all forces upon a single point. 

4. Disappearance of all forms of outer and 
inner sensations. 

5. Paralysis and indeed more often catalepsy 
of all muscles; thence firm and spasmodic per- 
sistence of position, which expresses either ulti- 
mate dissolution or extreme agitation. 

6. An irresistible inclination to raise one's self, 
even if only with the eyes. 

7. Appearance of pictures which compress 
themselves into a single frame, or a single picture 
combining in itself all beauty of delineation and 
color. 

8. Final result: a single, thrilling sensation 
which blends all the lesser ones ; a single, thrilling 
feeling into which all other feeling powers trans- 
form themselves. 

9. An emanation of light beams, of sublime 
illumination, from this single point. 

10. Trance or ecstasy. 

The person who has passed up this graded de- 
velopment, stretches forth his arms and thoughts 
towards infinity, and inhales with full lungs the 
ravishing atmosphere of all human sublimity. 



68 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Attaining the outermost border of human limita- 
tions he sees and dreams of a man who is more 
than man, greater than he himself, an angel or a 
god. 

The observer, seeing the one in ecstasy, admires 
him or scoffs at him accordingly as he believes or 
doubts ; he deifies him or commits him to the mad- 
house, makes him a god or a fool ; so closely juxta- 
posed are the extreme poles of the tangible and 
the conceivable, so quickly are the tears of joy 
changed to those of pain, the smile of the child to 
that of the skeptic, the convulsions of voluptuous- 
ness and those of the death struggle, the lyric of 
delirium and of mental aberration, the inspira- 
tion of the poet and the hypothesis of the scholar. 

Naturally, real and complete ecstasy must be 
distinguished from the incipient and twilight 
forms of it; hence the division into lesser and 
greater ecstasies. Lesser {Die Ideinen Elas- 
tasen) ecstasies are quite naturally most frequent, 
and there are perhaps few men of the higher races 
who do not at some time experience them. 

Music, contemplation of works of art or natu- 
ral phenomena, many feeling excitements, reli- 
gion, can develop an extraordinary excitement 
focused in enjoyment and admiration. What- 
ever might be the source of the enrapturement, 



ECSTASY 69 

we feel connected to external things only through 
the single sensation producing the ecstasy, and 
we manifest the symptoms of accentuated ab- 
sentmindedness, absorption. But when on analy- 
sis there is found along with attention clearness 
of consciousness, ecstasy is not present. We can 
love, admire, feel deeply, but so long as the out- 
lines of the real or fancied picture or the various 
tones of the music are clear, ecstasy is not there; 
it comes only when the nervous tension is stressed 
till pictorial outlines and tonal varieties blend into 
a single sensation. This is lesser ecstasy, a high 
order of feeling pleasure too seldom enjoyed. 
The original cause of our ecstasy disappears, and 
before our entranced mind passes ravishing pic- 
tures, extraordinarily beautiful thoughts, as fleet- 
ing and fugacious as they are beautiful. 

And here is a very noteworthy point in the his- 
tory of human thought. When one has thus 
reached the highest and outermost bounds of per- 
ceptibility the force released from the nerve cen- 
ters must either be entirely expended in the ec- 
stasy itself, or be transformed into work of art, of 
the pen, the chisel, or pencil. That is to say, the 
nerve force liberated must be consumed and ter- 
minated by the ecstatic condition completing and 
exhausting itself, or through the checking of the 



70 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

ecstasy in its incipient stages and transforming 
the nervous force into action. With women or 
men of the feminine type, with contemplative na- 
tures, every strong admiration, every strong de- 
sire can pass into the ecstatic stage, being there 
consumed and terminated. In real men, however, 
and all energetic natures, ecstasy in the initial 
stages transforms itself into useful work. 

It is a law of fate that high sensitivity hinders 
activity, and seldom are poets men of action. 

The approach to the greater ecstasy is usually 
through the lesser. In the development of the 
greater from the smaller the isolation of con- 
sciousness becomes more complete till the highest 
tension is catalepsy, the highest degree of trance. 

Admiration is seldom sufficient to produce the 
greater ecstasy, there must be passionate affec- 
tion; hence with rare exceptions the approach to 
greater ecstasy is through love or religious feel- 
ing, — two great human forces; the one creates, 
the other adores and hopes. Of these two, reli- 
gious ecstacy is the deepest. In love ecstacy is 
always a taint of carnality, be it ever so weak. 

Other than the division of ecstasy into degrees 
of intensity, distinction according to kind is a 



ECSTASY 71 

natural division. The following scheme of divi- 
sion is suggested: 

(a) First Group: Ecstasy of Inclination. 

1. Ecstasy of sexual love. 

2. Ecstasy of family love. 

3. Ecstasy of friendship. 

4. Ecstasy of general human love. 

5. Ecstasy of sacrifice. 

! Devotion. 
Consecration, resignation, etc. 
Visions. 
Prayer. 

(b) Second Group: Esthetic Ecstasy. 

1. Ecstasy of figure and form. 

2. Ecstasy of color. 

3. Ecstasy of symmetry. 

4. Ecstasy of the infinitely large. 

5. Ecstasy of the infinitely small. 

6. Ecstasy of variety. 

7. Musical ecstasy. 

(c) Third Group: Intellectual Ecstasy. 

1. Ecstasy of acquisition of truth. 

2. Ecstasy of creation. 

3. Ecstasy of eloquence. 

4. Ecstasy of power and deed. 

5. Metaphysical ecstasy. 



n HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Ecstasy of Ariimals. Without doubt the ani- 
mals next lower in the scale to humans experience 
ecstasy which can be divided into (1) muscular, 
(2) musical, and (3) aesthetic ecstasy. 

Latent nerve forces, transformed motion, are 
constantly liberated from every point of the cen- 
tral nervous system. These heap up if not used, 
condense, and remain potential. When the ten- 
sion becomes extreme the nerve cells can no 
longer hold these forces in check and they are 
suddenly loosened in many forms. Now it is a 
song, now a leap, now running, or an irregular, 
spasmodic general muscular contraction, — a mus- 
cular orgy. But in the midst of these muscular 
orgies there are moments when motion ceases and 
the animal is absorbed in a single sensation, 
maybe one of the simplest. This is certainly a 
twilight form of ecstasy, for the animal in its ab- 
sorption, forgetful of surroundings, may even ex- 
pose itself to surprise by enemies. 

Among song birds ecstasy following outbursts 
of song have frequently been observed, while the 
peacock, the turkey cock, the rooster, are ex- 
amples of those capable of sesthetic ecstasy. 

With children, men upon the lowest stages of 
intelligence, and savage men, the same twilight 
form of ecstasy appears which we have seen in 



ECSTASY 73 

animals. Our little ones often feel an irresistible 
impulse to motion; they jump, give themselves 
over to a disorderly, almost mad muscular orgy; 
they sing, scream, laugh, stopping at times to 
drink in the full warm life surging through their 
beings, oblivious of their surroundings. It is a 
lesser ecstasy quite similar to that of animals. 

Strongly sesthetic feelings are lacking in chil- 
dren but not in savage men. 

Not all feelings nor all degrees of feeling can 
produce ecstasy. For feeling to do so it must be- 
long to the most powerful which shake the heart 
and be capable of reaching a high degree of ten- 
sion. Only in rare cases can friendship, love of 
humanity, brotherly love, filial love reach the de- 
gree of ecstasy. Not even father love is likely to 
reach so far. But the two highest forces of repro- 
ductive life can lead to ecstasy ; viz, the reciprocal 
love of man for woman, woman for man, and 
mother-love. But only under certain conditions 
and under high tension do these lead to ecstasy, — 
only when there is intense longing, an overpower- 
ing joy, or a heroic self-sacrifice for the loved one. 

The ecstasies of longing or ardent desire are 
continuous tensity towards a pole of the feeling 
world, usually gloomily colored by a kind of 



74 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

poetical melancholy, not seldom associated with 
deep admiration. The ecstasies of feeling inter- 
lace with those of the aesthetic. 

The ecstasies of joy or satisfaction are keen but 
evanescent, for the force is completely trans- 
ferred to pleasm-e, and there is brought about an 
equilibrium between the longing to possess and 
the joy of possessing. 

There is yet a third form of feeling ecstasy, 
composed of pain, compassion, and sacrifice, 
wherein the feeling powers are focused in the 
love of mankind. In this ecstasy the raising of 
several of the moral elements which complicate 
this phenomena is essential. 

The ecstasy springing from love of humanity 
is the reward of that love. In this ecstasy we no 
longer see the various individuals we have helped, 
but, absorbed in contemplation of human miser- 
ies, we feel ourselves the servants of a gracious 
God, a mysterious providence. 

The highest pinnacle of human love is usually 
attained only upon the wings of religion, great 
pain, or deep repentance. To do good to men and 
through tears of pain reach God is the highest 
expression of religious feeling. The Christian 
gospel is a textbook of love of mankind, and 
through that alone it is superior to Buddhism and 



ECSTASY 75 

Brahmanism. Revenge and doing good are op- 
posite healers of mortal sufferings, the latter far 
the rarest. 

Repentance is another road to the larger ec- 
stasy of love of humanity. Moral law is punished 
by conscience. Men who do evil for evil's sake, 
who experience no conscience prick, are rare, — 
are atavistic reversions to cannabalistic forbears. 
Others commit sin under sudden impulse and 
ever afterward carry remorse. The marrow of 
inspiration is lifeless and fractured. Most men 
are capable of remorse ; it is the first punishment 
to meet the guilty. Remorse is a sickness from 
which the rabble heals itself by doing penance at 
the command of judge or priest; the noble man 
recovers therefrom only through doing good. 
This demands great moral power, of which few 
are capable. The man who through self-sacri- 
ficing devotion expiates his guilt and frees him- 
self from the smitings of conscience becomes a 
god. 

Ecstasy of Friendship, Friendship is a feeling 
of love without the attraction of sex or blood re- 
lation. It is possible between those of opposite 
sex, but sex is a disturbing element. Friendship 
is a luxurj^-feeling {JLuxusgefilhl) not found 



76 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

among men of low physical talents, or is de- 
formed if found. It is weak and easily yields to 
stronger sensations. Because love and mother- 
hood so largely fill woman's heart, therefore she 
shows rarer examples of warm and tender friend- 
ship. Sublime and true friendship being rare is 
delicate and enters the realm of idealism. The 
stamp of nobility is put upon friendship by free 
choice. There is no necessity, fate, destiny, no 
compulsion by men, circumstances, or time. 
From an inner blending of two beings a third 
life springs, and this union of two human natures 
can lead to ecstasy, especially when we take 
refuge in the bosom of Friendship to escape the 
confusion of the profanum vulgus. The ecstasy 
of two such friends on meeting and greeting is 
deep and silent. Friendship ecstasies spring from 
sympathy and consolation. 

Fraternal love {Die Geschwisterliehe) is often 
lukewarm and weak. It is strengthened by sex 
differences. Fraternal love strong enough to lead 
into ecstastic conditions is usually between 
brother and sister. Fraternal love is a luxury 
feeling, hence indistinct with low human natures. 

The Ecstasy of Mother-love. Woman as 
woman is only complete as mother. Motherli- 



ECSTASY 77 

ness is passion and destiny, love and sacrifice, ex- 
ertion of thought and offering of the feehngs; 
she is a human creature who offers creatures who 
hve after her ; she is the present which brings forth 
the future. 

Such an irresistible human feeling as mother- 
love must have its own ecstasies; in fact it has 
many inexpressible joys. 

There is no one in whom the sight of child will 
not arouse sympathy; who, then, can fancy the 
warm glow of the mother who looks upon her own 
creature. In her gaze is her soul, she is all smiles, 
all joy, and the ecstasy is great and complete, at 
once aesthetic and lovely. It is disturbed only by 
the agitation of the trembling hands which mov- 
ing to and fro would become a single caress. 
Those hand-pats are so vigorous that they be- 
come blows, the kisses so fiery that they approxi- 
mate bites. As the child sleeps in the shelter of 
the motherly gaze, the ecstasy of the mother con- 
tinues quietly. Eyes fixed upon their object, 
breath accelerated to synchronize Vvdth the breath- 
ing of the child, a childish sigh is answered by one 
from the mother, a sleep-impelled smile upon its 
lips is reflected on the mother lips. Heads near 
together, the two lives represent the interlacing of 
present and future. 



78 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Such ecstasies are the commonest of mother- 
love, and Austrahan, Em^opean, Indian, and 
negro are capable of them. 

But of still larger ecstasies is the mother heart 
capable. The mother contemplates her brood, 
and glows. Now the ecstasy is sesthetic, now it 
springs from feeling alone ; now it is composed of 
admiration and love; noAV of thirst for shining 
devotion in sacrifice of herself. Then admiration, 
hope, and fear blend in a single indescribable sen- 
sation which is the summation of care, tenderness, 
the glow of motherliness. It is the majestic ec- 
stasy of mother-love. 

Father-love is much weaker than mother-love, 
and only when intensely idealized is it capable of 
ecstasy. 

Ecstasies of Filial Love. With animals the fam- 
ily dissolves when the young cease depending on 
parents for nourishment. With mankind love of 
children for parents springs from similarity of 
tastes, force of habit, thankfulness, and common 
environments. It is a luxury feeling, for only 
mother-love obeys a necessity. And filial love is 
capable of ecstasy which though rare is high. 
Mother-love is the present generating the future ; 
filial love is the present looking into the past. 



ECSTASY 79 

It were a useless task to attempt a delineation 
of all forms of ecstasy for every feeling capable 
of generating it ; but each rapture may be classi- 
fied on general lines. 

All ecstasies are similar; but every feeling im- 
presses upon ecstasy its own signature. Every 
feeling can develop ecstasies of longing, admira- 
tion, sacrifice, but in every feeling longing, admi- 
ration, and sacrifice are interlaced in a manner 
varying according to their natures and the tem- 
perament of the person. 

The Ecstasies of Platonic Love. In the lan- 
guages of all higher races is found an expression 
equivalent to "platonic love." Many definitions 
have been given. Platonic love is the feeling 
which unites a man and a woman who, although 
they desire each other, voluntarily forego corpo- 
real union and experience only union of souls. 
How far this love goes, how long it lasts is diffi- 
cult to ascertain ; but one thing is certain, its ideal- 
ism makes it a rare blossom of exquisite beauty 
and fragrance. It is capable of inexpressible ec- 
stasies, approximating those of religion and 
mother-love. Only exceptional souls are capable 
of its sublimity, for it must take place not between 
old persons or those who cannot desire each other, 



80 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

but only between those young and beautiful. But 
souls have sex as do bodies and in platonic love 
they stand juxtaposed, always looking at each 
other, without immediate contact, each emitting 
towards the other streams of light and warmth. 
The soul of man is composed of power and action, 
that of woman of grace and goodness; these 
blended form the whole man, and mutually at- 
tract ; but in platonic love the attraction is held in 
abeyance by the obligation which permits them to 
love but not to touch. Platonic love must be free 
from earthly pleasure, and one caress destroys the 
platonic heaven. 

It is only the strongest love which can carry one 
up the heights of platonic ecstasy, for strength 
alone can detain lust at the threshold of the tem- 
ple and change the hottest passion into soft moon- 
light which gives light but does not burn. But 
strong love is tamed only by death or a miracle, 
and this miracle is platonic love, which is a great 
gentle melancholy. 

When longing is smothered and extinguished 
adoration remains, and this gradually refines it- 
self, the memory of fought-out struggles fades, 
the form we adore loses its personality to be- 
come a myth or symbol. The platonically-loved 
woman is no longer Laura, or Beatrice, but 



ECSTASY 81 

woman, the one in whom is included all beauty, 
all grace, all charm. 

As in ascetic vision God appears in highest 
beauty, heightened by ecstatic adoration, so in 
platonic love the forces of thought and feeling 
directed upon a single point lend wings to fancy 
and power to pencil and make of man poet and 
painter. 

The ecstasies of platonic love may spring from 
piety and the sacrifice which impels to martyr- 
dom. Platonic love may be rich in strong ecsta- 
sies. 

Religious Ecstasy. To deal with religion scien- 
tifically is difficult, for man has not yet learned to 
think without heart or judge without nerves. 

We all know the religious feeling, — though we 
might not be able to accurately define it — one of 
the highest, most complicated and indefinite which 
moves the human brain. It is directed towards 
invisible creatures, seen only with the eye of faith, 
and whom we can love more than any of flesh and 
blood. This property of invisibility is in all 
forms of religious feeling. The more intense it 
is the more it separates man from the visible 
world. The chief goal, the great longing of every 



83 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

religious soul consists in directing all wishes, all 
inclinations to God. 

The ascetics speak to God in various ways, de- 
voutly, prostratedly, with lowered and pleading 
faces, and in each way may reach ecstasy. The 
greater the isolation of the ascetic, the deeper he 
penetrates the world of fancy, the greater his 
efforts towards still higher elevations. 

Religious ecstasy is not easily gained; not all 
are capable of it. A first essential is an unwaver- 
ing faith in the existence of the being we worship, 
and added thereto must be an excitement of high- 
est nervous sensitiveness, generally termed hys- 
teria. And as the ascetic life demands fasts, 
vigils, mortification of desire, and corporeal want, 
the accompanying weakness increases the hyper- 
asthesia and irritability; hallucinations, somnam- 
bulism, catalepsy, alternate and present gro- 
tesque or sublime pictures; often both. People 
call these matters of fact miracles; science ex- 
plains them by physiology of the nervous system. 

Detachment, submersion of all feelings and 
thoughts in love for an invisible being believed to 
be all perfection, all great, all powerful — such is 
the foundation on which religious ecstasy raises 
itself. 



ECSTASY 83 

Devotion is a warm strong love accompanying 
deep, even fervid, admiration. In the earthly 
world devotion is the highest degree of love; in 
the religious world it is the usual form of love 
man feels for God and other supernatural beings. 
People revere God through the form of Christ, 
more seldom through that of the eternal Father 
or of the Holy Ghost ; through a martyr of sub- 
hme beauty, — a venerable old man, a dove floating 
in a halo. Where the eye beholds something, 
there love can fix itself, and caress, embrace, kiss. 

The reverence of God and of heavenly things is 
a power vv^hich never exhausts itself because it is 
not transformed into work. It is a higher form 
than platonic love, for it lacks carnality and is 
directed on other than human creatures. It is an 
eternal longing because directed upon an eternal 
being; it is infinite because it floats in the vacancy 
of time and space, and has for horizon only the 
hope of union beyond the grave with the beloved 
Being. But the believer's powers are finite, hu- 
man, and he loves with the senses and heart. 
Nothing is so similar to love as religious ecstasy. 

A comparative study of the ecstasies of Saint 
Therese and the most exuberant passages of Dan- 
te's "Paradise" would afford rich material for the 
comparative psychology of the sexes. In the 



«4 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

reverence of the woman lies more feeling, in that 
of the man more admiration. The woman loves 
God with more carnality, tenderness, passion; the 
man with devotion, reverence, with more intelli- 
gence than love. Intensified by her powerful 
love-power woman more readily reaches ecstasy 
in reverence than does man. With both reverence 
leads to ecstasy only through absolute chastity. 

Ascetic ecstasy begins in devotion. First there 
is praise for the omnipotence, the omniscience, the 
compassion, the divine goodness and indulgence, 
the superlative beauty of the Most High; then 
there is detachment from consideration of the 
separate characteristics and consciousness centers 
on ecstatic admiration. We lie in the dust, head 
depressed, body bent down, as if to occupy the 
smallest possible space, only the eyes are raised, 
as if not to lose one moment's enjoyment of the 
divine countenance of Him who absorbs within 
Him the whole conceivable world; in whom even 
we are absorbed, like a grain of salt in the ocean. 
How poor and miserable earthly love appears to 
us in such divine ecstasy. In our refined rever- 
ence we do not love a human creature, not a beau- 
tiful creature, but beauty itself, — we revere the 
Mighty of the mighty, grace, goodness, wisdom 
in their perfection. 



ECSTASY 85 

Devotion includes prostration, termed by 
others resignation, humiliation of the creature 
before the creator. This prostration is not 
only an expression of Christian meekness, but a 
natural form of very strong love. So long as we 
remain erect and with brawn and brain magnify 
the I, so long can one neither possess nor ab- 
sorb us, nor can we possess or absorb. Energy, 
pride, are forces, but they are not devotion, 
absorption. Pride is the greatest isolator 
in the world, and in order to love aright and 
much, pride must be sacrificed to love. Where 
pride rules, there strong love and ascetic ecstasy 
are not possible. Hence Christ said. Only little 
children can enter the kingdom of heaven. Hu- 
mility is fundamental to Christianity. To con- 
quer pride means long ascetic training. 

In ascetic life ecstasy of prostration scarcely 
differentiates itself from that of devotion. They 
usually blend. The one or the other predomi- 
nates according to the psychical characteristics 
of the person. Woman will oftenest tend towards 
prostration, the man to devotion. 

The Ascetic Vision. The prostrated devotee, 
the "knees of the soul bent," cannot maintain the 
condition of ecstatic hypnotism without expe- 



86 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

riencing hallucinations and visions. They are 
visions when we during their continuance under- 
stand them to be purely mental pictures, halluci- 
nations when we hold them to be genuine and do 
not by reason correct the deception of hypnotism. 
In ascetic ecstasy, cut off from outer environment 
by concentration of consciousness upon a single 
thought or feeling, under complete hypnotism, 
the doors of the mundane world are closed to us 
and those of the heavens open before us. 

Somnambulism, delirium, extravasation of 
blood, convulsions, catalepsy, and other patho- 
logical phenomena may accompany religious ec- 
stasy, but not essentially so. 

Ecstasy is an extraordinary condition, long 
duration or frequent repetition of which will 
cause psychical and physiological derange- 
ments. The ecstatic is no lunatic, but stands at 
the place where height and depth touch, where 
genius and insanity jostle each other, though per- 
haps not just as Lombroso has held. 

Prayer. A tangled phenomenon of intricate 
psychological processes, prayer is difficult of 
analysis, but all the elements of religious ecstasy 
may enter it. Prayer from earliest forms of re- 
ligion has remained essentially a petition. To 



ECSTASY 87 

pray is to petition. That humiliation, a bowing 
to a stronger one, to the Strongest of the strong, 
asking to be granted what we ourselves cannot 
attain; it means thankfulness to and love for the 
Giver, to submerge one's self in deep reverence 
which comprises hope, gratefulness, admiration. 
Man has always found in prayer much happi- 
ness and consolation. Many suicides have been 
prevented, many crimes unperpetrated, much 
family happiness promoted by man's faith in 
prayer, — not mere ritualistic prayer, but true, 
warm, ascetic prayer which first prostrates the 
soul, then the body, humbles all feelings, our men- 
tal powers before God. To pray is to have hope 
and faith in a great Being of justice, love, vir- 
tue; to revere a Being never seen, only thought 
of, the Source of all goodness. Be the praying 
one not deeply earnest and sensitive, he reaches 
only the twilight conditions of ecstasy; but the 
trained ascetic soars straight to his paradise of 
ecstasy. To mount there means spiritual assi- 
duity. Every human endeavor has its plains, its 
hills, its mountains, the clouds, — and over these, 
heaven ! 

Prayer alleviates pain, lessens despair. When 
hope is gone then faith weakens, but prayer turns 



88 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

despair to resignation. Hope and resignation, — 
two guardian angels of life. 

There are religious ecstasies for which devo- 
tion, vision, prayer do not form the sole basis, but 
into which other but less important elements en- 
ter. Less important, they are more apparent, 
superficial, and hence to them are ascribed by the 
masses the origin of ecstasy. This confusion of 
the varnish for the essence, the form with the 
structure, is to be found in all studies of the es- 
sence of religion. 

The secondary elements of many religious 
ecstasies arise from certain sensations of sight and 
hearing, more seldom from smell. Church archi- 
tecture and decoration; odors of incense; vocal 
and organ music, all have played their part. 
Perfumes, tones, and colors blend to form the 
scene of religious observances, be it high mass, 
a procession, or jubilee. 

To-day the greater religious ecstasies are rare. 
History affords many illustrations of noteworthy 
ascetic ecstasies. 

Ecstasies of Patriotism. Patriotism is a deep 
but indefinite feeling of the luxury group, for it 
is quite lacking with many men of all ranks, and 
because it relates not so much to an expanse of 



ECSTASY 89 

land as to a myth composed of idealism and real- 
ism which according to time and many other ex- 
traneous influences changes its form and bound- 
aries. 

For the savage, savage either because of un- 
clothed body or unclothed mind, fatherland is lit- 
tle more than an abode. Not to love fatherland 
is a misery of the heart, a cretinism of the feeling. 

Patriotism is at once filial and mystic ; filial be- 
cause the fatherland is the common mother ; mys- 
tic because one cannot caress or embrace it. 

The fatherland is the land of our forbears, the 
history of the past record of our ancestors; it is 
the land whose name when heard in a foreign 
country sets the heart pounding, causes us to kiss 
a newspaper. That word at the call to arms 
raises up waves of men, calls forth from every 
hut an armed man and leaves at the window a 
weeping woman. It is a magic word which can 
change every man into a soldier, a woman into a 
martyress, or make children weep because they 
are not men and old men weep because they can 
no longer carry the rifle. 

The most usual ecstasies of patriotism are 
those experienced by the returning traveler on 
seeing the fatherland again after long absence, 
and those enjoyed at great national rejoicings 



90 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

over national glory or triumph. The first are in- 
dividual, the second shared with many. Both are 
capable of great and indescribable bliss. 

Individual ecstasies of patriotism must come to 
those chosen few born to gain for the fatherland 
freedom or greatness, who first dream of, then 
meditate upon the great work fixed as their life's 
goal. 

But the ecstasies of patriotism are not reserved 
for heroes alone. All who have loved the father- 
land, who have consecrated to it their thoughts 
and their blood can enjoy the rich ecstasy. One 
can bring to the altar of feeling no greater offer- 
ing than one's self. The number who through 
war, revolution, political struggles, love and work 
for the country is legion, and history forgets them 
just because they are so many. History is in a 
hurry and therefore represents the many small 
martyrs by a single person. For every form of 
sacrifice, etc., history designates an individual as 
a type and this individual becomes an idol. 

The greatest joys of life are not measured by 
the meter of genius or upon the scale of riches. 
None is too poor to sacrifice for his country, none 
is too unfortunate to enjoy its ecstasy. 

Small sums become great when added ; so weak 
feelings added or multiplied become tempests. 



ECSTASY 91 

And with no feeling is this more true than pa- 
triotism. How do two similar or equal feelings 
summate? Not by mathematical formula. How 
does inspiration multiply itself when it appears 
simultaneously in a hundred, thousand, hundred 
thousand hearts ? Not by rule of numbers. There 
are epidemics of feelings, and the dissemination 
of inspiration (Begeisterivng) is equally as mys- 
terious, shows the selfsame leaps, the same mira- 
cles, and the same diffusion as do great epidemics 
of disease. 

The kindling of the heart through a national 
glory is one of the greatest and most inciting 
spectacles of the human world, where a whole 
people joyously sing together the electrifying 
hymns of victory. How the multitudes roar in 
the drunkenness of so many hearts sensing simul- 
taneously the same joys, inflamed by the same 
delirium of fever! 



Various Lesser Ecstasies. Love for animals 
may under certain conditions become strong 
enough to develop the ecstatic state. Some civi- 
lized ( ?) people with their dogs, the Arabians and 
the Gauchos with their horses, the Kaffirs and 
many other Africans with their oxen, the Lap- 



m HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

landers with their reindeer, afford cases in evi- 
dence of such ecstasy. These somewhat rare cases 
of ecstasy, if not pathological aberrations, appear 
to belong more to the sense of beauty than to in- 
clination, or to both at once, while they otherwise 
associate with other sensations. 

Riches. The avidity for wealth may serve as a 
natural transition to pathological trance which 
degrades rather than elevates. No one is witness 
to those individual ecstasies which the banker, the 
millionaire, the avaricious enjoy when they 
"reckon up" their possessions or let pass through 
their fingers those to them eloquent bits of paper 
— ^bank notes and "bills receivable." For the 
miser the gleam of gold is more dazzling than the 
light emanating from the eyes of the love god, 
and the feel of a bank note more voluptuous than 
that of the rosiest and most velvety flesh of the 
child. Contemplation of the condensed potential- 
ity of his accumulated hoard may produce ecstasy 
in the miser, or in the poet and philosopher in con- 
templation of the miserableness of it all. From 
such contemplation one succeeds step by step to 
the real ecstasy of the miser which substitutes the 
other ideals and can indeed replace the other joys 
of life. The passion becomes a vice, vice a mania 



ECSTASY 93 

which dominates the whole field of sensation, the 
whole realm of thought. 

Even hate, cruelty, all human vices are capable 
of ecstatic states. 

JEsthetic Ecstasies, Beauty is one of the high- 
est things within the reach of man. The philoso- 
phers in their search for the foundations of aes- 
thetics have soared above the clouds, becoming 
more confused the higher they have mounted. 
Had they been content to look around them and 
consider the simplest aesthetic facts, they perhaps 
would not have seen in their field so much fog 
and metaphysics, two words quite the same in 
meaning. Widely as the definitions of the beau- 
tiful differ, there is one constant characteristic, 
viz, the pleasure afforded by the beautiful. There 
are many kinds of pleasure which the sense of 
beauty does not influence, but for us there cannot 
be beauty if it does not afford us pleasure. 

Beauty is a subjective fact and a sensation. A 
thing may be beautiful for all ; but if it does not 
please us, then for us it has not beauty. On the 
other hand, beauty does not constitute the whole 
feeling, but is only an element of it. 

Beauty is a great factor of progress. Natural 
beauty deeply stirs us, stimulates us to attempt its 



94 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

representation, — to create a work of art, which is 
vigorous only when it springs from beauty. And 
this work of art generates on its side new off- 
spring — other things of beauty. In the field of 
morality also the beauty of heroism and other 
great deeds attracts and stimulates us to produce 
other moral beauties. 

Beauty is fruitful only when it represents the 
rightful union of these two elements ; a beautiful 
nature and a human brain capable of compre- 
hending and loving it. The warmer and heartier 
this love, the more fruitful the union. 

Beauty has from the first been a concomitant of 
man's progress, from the first lines drawn upon 
neolithic pots to the paintings of Raphael and 
Titian. Literature, industry, art, morals — all 
preserve a strong image of the aesthetic power of 
a race, a people, a time. And before the crea- 
tions of nature, art, music, man stands full of 
admiration and joy; an enjoyment which can be- 
come powerful enough to lead to ecstasy. 

With the rare exceptions noted the ecstasies 
arising from the senses are limited to the gesthetic 
and musical. Hence the aesthetic ecstasies fall 
into a natural division: (1) Ecstasies through 
nature beauties; (2) ecstasies through works of 
art; (3) ecstasies through musical beauties. 



ECSTASY 95 

Only rarely can admir^ition for the beautiful 
produce the larger ecstasy, but often through it 
do we enjoy the intoxication of the lesser ecstasy. 
Even when the artistic mind and the psychologi- 
cal condition of insjDiration are present one attains 
to ecstasy only before the objects which please 
him. 

Everyone knows what an artist is though per- 
haps unable to academically define it ; but what is 
inspiration (Begeisterung) ? It is an especial 
quickness of reaction to external impressions. 
They may relate to beauty, feeling, or intelli- 
gence. All sources of joy, truth, goodness, 
beauty, fame, every human feeling can develop 
within us those sudden impulses which stir up ad- 
miration or love, warm us and catch us up into 
the heights, intoxicate us. Fortunate those who 
are capable of such trances, for not only do they 
weave a golden thread through the fabric of life, 
but inspiration {Begeisterung) for the beautiful 
safeguards vulgarity and discouragement. And 
a people without such enthusiasm in some is dead 
or dying. 

Painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, can 
all open the closed paradise of the beautiful and 
lead into the perfect temple of beauty; so can 
man, plants, mountains, plains, sea, the heavens 



96 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

alternately entrance and intoxicate us with colors 
and gigantic sights and plunge us into the bound- 
less ocean of beauty. The beautiful is beautiful 
and divine because it sends its roots into the deep- 
est tissues of the mind and stretches its branches 
and foliage as far into the heights as the wings of 
thought can reach. The beautiful is the superla- 
tive of the superlative of sensation, feeling, and 
thought. 

The Nature Ecstasies, Sea and sky have in- 
toxicated men more than every other natural 
beauty ; for they are boundless, though not in the 
same way. Many hymns, in all times, have been 
sung to those two expanses of blue spread out 
below or overhead. And however winged the 
genius of the poet or strong and skillful the brush 
of the painter who would portray them, all mod- 
estly confess their impotency. The sea intoxi- 
cates us by its immeasurable greatness, dominates 
us by its ceaseless motion, while its voices are 
numberless. Multiplicity of color, restlessness 
of motion, boundlessness of horizon, mirror of 
earth and sky, the sea includes in a single picture 
such wealth of beaut}^ that it can agitate an idiot 
or confound a poet. A hymn to the sea always 
begins with a silence and a cry without words, for 



ECSTASY 97 

the sea at once produces too much sensation to 
set them to words and notes. And at the base of 
this ecstasy always lies melancholy awakened in 
us by things too great or too beautiful for us. 

The sea is divine, the earth infinitely beautiful, 
but both must be united to present the most in- 
toxicating scenes of nature. 

Even the land alone, rich in color, abounding 
in the picturesque, can entrance and enchain in 
ecstasy. And the sky, perhaps more than the 
sea, especially the night sky, can produce ecstasy, 
in contemplating its great expanse, infinity of 
worlds set in the glorious vault of heaven. 

Ecstasies Produced by Flowers. Among liv- 
ing creatures flowers most frequently afford ma- 
terial for admiration and trance. Neither chil- 
dren nor aged persons, the man of genius nor the 
uncultured, can contemplate a beautiful flower 
without experiencing a pleasant excitement 
which under the right conditions can reach en- 
trancement. In Linnaeus was combined the 
genius of a great nature observer and the fine 
feeling of a great poet. In his Lapland journey, 
when he first found a Calypso borealis he knelt 
before this royal orchid which appeared to unite 
within itself all the beauty of the polar flora and 



98 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

thanked God iii rapture that he had produced so 
beautiful a creature. 

The Musical Ecstasp. Music is one of the 
greatest human creations. It ravishes with a bhss 
equal to love cramps (Krainpfen) and the ten- 
derest feeling-excitation; and yet we can enjoy 
this bliss daily and for hours together give our- 
selves up to it, and refine it through long devoted 
practice, without giving cause to be called vicious, 
without injury to health or paralysis of members. 
Doubtless music enjoyment knows a fatigue, but 
only by the use of nerve and brain material, but 
this use wears out neither nerves nor brain as do 
so many other phenomena of sensual pleasures 
belonging either to feeling or intelligence. 

The music sensation can more easily than any 
other lead to ecstasy, and this is true upon several 
grounds. The musical enjoyments are among 
the strongest and most indefinite, with strong 
expansive force. 

Hearing is above all the sense of feeling; the 
eye the instrument of thought. The ecstasy of 
sight is especially intellectual, harmony-ecstasy 
chiefly concerns feeling; and this alone is suffi- 
cient to explain the great frequency of musical 



ECSTASY 99 

ecstasy compared to those which depend upon 
the seeing sense. 

In musical ecstasy the entrancement is colored 
and inspired by the psychological conditions pre- 
vailing and displays as much variety. Music in- 
tensifies the mood in which we are when it is heard. 
Each person is excited by music in a manner 
peculiar to himself. And among the forms of 
musical ecstasy thus depending upon a definite 
mental condition may be distinguished four ; ( 1 ) 
the amorous, (2) the melancholy, (3) the pug- 
nacious {hampflustig) , (4) the visionary {phan- 
tastische) . 

In the musical amorous ecstasy we feel the 
need of loving; if in love to love more warmly and 
strongly. 

For many who are inclined to sadness music is 
always melancholy. 

The eager-for-the-fray {kampflustig) musical 
ecstasy is rarer and of less duration than the two 
foregoing. Under the form of a lesser ecstasy it 
is that which impels timid troops against the 
enemy or against the entrenchments of a forti- 
fication. Trumpets, drums, and martial music 
are just as good instruments of war as cannon or 
baj^onets, and music has often contributed to vic- 
tory. 



100 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

But off the battle field, around a piano, or in 
a concert room can one from ecstasies, musical 
and kampflilstig, gather courage and power to 
struggle against the enemies of life or to enter 
political or literary contests. 

The last form of musical ecstasy is difficult to 
define. Under its influence we are neither in love 
nor sad nor enjoined to fight against man or 
things, but are carried far into dreamland where 
we see or dream new worlds with new creatures; 
but the harmony always accompanies us and lifts 
us up into the ethereal and variegated regions of 
fancy. 

The Ecstasies of Thought. Only a few select 
persons with whom work is a passion and who 
thirst for truth can experience certain raptures. 
For the majority work is punishment and life's 
ideal consists in doing as little as is possible. 

In no other passion do individual peculiarity 
and independence count for so much as in the 
thirst for truth. It is a sublime egotism (if we 
may be permitted to connect these words) 
wherein the I brings into play its whole power 
and capacity. It is the most subjective of all 
passions. 

Genius is the fruit of elements unseen by the 



ECSTASY 101 

superficial observer, cooperating so strongly that 
at times little extraneous stimulation is needed. 
Indeed, adverse external conditions may even 
strengthen the tendency, for before the genius 
stands truth beckoning him constantly. The 
more painful the sacrifice, the greater the hin- 
drances, the stronger becomes this love for truth. 
Curiosity, the irresistible itching for knowledge 
of new things, which is the germ of love for 
science, has reposed in the breast of every man 
since Eden. From this twilight form it rises as 
a great passion to the pinnacles of the thinkable. 
But no man is capable of scaling all these heights. 
Each is born with certain equipment adapted for 
mounting certain ones and not others. He who 
were capable of mounting all would be no longer 
a man but a god. 

Truth is found not alone in the nature world, 
but in history and art, and there is sesthetic truth, 
and moral truth, and a truth which consists in 
criticism of truth. And in the laboratories and 
museums (museen) there is a whole host of quiet 
ecstasies. Often, after long and painstaking 
search there lies before us as a result of our in- 
dustry the whole fabric of our constructive en- 
deavor, and in contemplation of it we experience 
the ecstasy of the truth we sought and brought 



103 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

to light. There are many keen, deep ecstasies in 
the secret watches of the night by the study lamp. 

The Ecstasies of Fantasy. There are found 
other abysses than those of mountain cliff and 
glacier; they lie beyond the clouds, beyond the 
breathable air, beyond the world visible to the 
naked eye or one armed with the telescope. They 
are the abysms of the conceivable, to which the 
human fancy is prone to carry itself in ecstasy, 
in order, as it were, to inspire the atmosphere of 
a better world. Fancy is the strongest winged 
of human capacities and carries us to a higher, 
broader, deeper world than are those penetrated 
by the telescope. Each dreams his own fantasy 
according to the nature of his own brain and 
special stimulation to which he is subjected; for 
our fancy magnifies or reduces, just as the tele- 
scope enlarges or reduces according as we look 
through the ocular or objective. 

Those weak of imagination can strengthen it 
by opium, hasheesh, coco, or one of the several 
other narcotics, to bring about artificial fancy- 
ecstasies. These visions are even richer in color 
and form than the natural ones and constitute 
the highest form of enjoyment of perhaps one 
half those who inhabit the east half of our planet. 



ECSTASY 103 

The rich-in-thought orientals who consume no 
power in the battle of thoughts have turned all 
this power to fantasy. In oriental poesy this over 
excitation is discernible and in Persian and In- 
dian poetry one can readily point out the influ- 
ence of opium and hasheesh. Fantastic ecstasy 
is usually complicated with other feeling or ec- 
static elements. 

The Ecstasies of Eloquence. After a descrip- 
tion of the psychological signs of ecstasy in 
speaking and listening Montegazza says that 
whether the listeners be few or many the speaker 
must have won them all in order to melt them into 
one charmed, compact individual, a captured 
public, before he can make claim upon ecstasy 
either for himself or his audience. 

Ecstasies of Contest and Power. He de- 
scribes four men, Cavour, Bismarck, Garibaldi, 
and Moltke, and surmises their ecstasies in con- 
templating their power and their accomplish- 
ments. 

The will, which because of its importance was 
early classified as one of the three fundamental 
forces of the mind, is perhaps a capacity possess- 
ing no separate organ or a separate function of 



104 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

a definite part of our brain, but functionizes very 
probably when the efficients of the forces ac- 
cumulated in the nerve cells are set in motion 
through an extraneous stimulation. 

Though will power is the moment of many 
known functions of the brain, yet it is so differ- 
ent with various men that it suffices to distin- 
guish between the weak and strong, the impotent 
and athlete ; to be able to will {wollen zu Konnen) 
and will to will is the first essential of a great 
character, the first virtue of a man of deed. 

To feel is well enough, for much feeling means 
accumulation of material which fits for much 
work; to think is better, for it means an orderly 
group arrangement of the pictures recorded by 
our senses; but to will is best of all. One little 
thought which wills is more useful and effective 
than a hundred big thoughts which do not will 
or only weakly will. Many men observe, gather, 
arrange, but with little practical use. Men of 
action on the other hand, act, form, force, bend 
all to their will. 

After a combat in parliament or a battle with 
cannon a victorious minister or general can en- 
joy an intoxication of ecstasy. "I have willed 
and have been able," is a superhuman, a divine 
cry. 



ECSTASY 105 

The Ecstasies of Creation, Man has brought 
forth two creations; the one Moses has created, 
the other Darwin. These two names corporify 
(verkorperen) not two historical truths but two 
juxtaposed systems which apparently contradict 
but which really meet, for they are both theolog- 
ical. The Mosaic history of creation is sublime 
and poetical; Darwin is confused (verfahren) 
with the creation, like Luther with Christ ; science 
gets on well (vertragt) with faith. The God of 
Sinai speaks with the voice of thunder, the other 
speaks scientifically; the first brings order out of 
chaos by his breath, the other like an experienced 
practical manager. 

The creator when he pauses before his creation 
falls into ecstasy, be the newborn a world, a poem, 
a statue, a painting, a science, a theory, or a 
temple. 

Without a warm, strong love there is no crea- 
tion in the world of creating, no birth in the world 
of art. A statue, or a book, or a painting, or a 
melody, is thought of in a flash, that is the begin- 
ning. Fleeting as this flash may be, it can shake 
all the fibres of brain and heart, and suffices to 
throw us into ecstasy. .The creative inspiration 
is with every work of art. In the world of 
thought the highest ecstasy is that of creation. 



Chapter 5 
Peyote Religion, 

Some years ago the writer became interested 
in a question involving the use among the Ameri- 
can Indians of a species of cactus in certain cere- 
monies of a religious nature, varying somewhat 
among the different tribes, the ceremonies in gen- 
eral being called the "Mescal religion," a term de- 
rived from "mescal button," as the dried plants 
are designated by some, though they are wholly 
different from the plants from which the well 
known Mexican drink mescal is derived. 

My interest was aroused by coming in contact 
with Mr. Philip Cook, a member of the Okla- 
homa Cheyennes, and Three Fingers ^ a chief of 
the same tribe, who told me of the ceremonies 
and the extended use of the plant among the 
Oklahoma tribes in particular and the American 
tribes in general, they insisting that the adoption 
of the "Mescal religion" by the American Indians 
was universal. Their immediate object in pre- 
senting the matter to me was to convince me not 
only of the rapid extension of its use among the 
Indians of the United States, but also to demon- 
strate the firm hold which this religion, so 



106 



PEYOTE RELIGION 107 

strangely fascinating to the Indian, has taken 
upon the Oklahoma tribes and the Cheyennes in 
particular. .They were emphatic in their asser- 
tions that neither the missionaries among the 
Indians nor the combined efforts of the Govern- 
ment agents and the missionaries had succeeded 
either in checking the spread of the religion or 
stopping the traffic in the plant, and that in all 
probability the Indians would not abandon the 
religion until something in their opinion equally 
as good and effective in a religious or ceremonial 
way is substituted for this strange cult. 

This insistence by these worthy representatives 
of the aboriginal Americans, upon the universal 
extent of this movement among the Indians and 
the tenacity with which they held to it in the face 
of the combined opposition of the various church 
representatives and the governmental agents, 
greatly aroused my interest and I determined to 
learn more of it. It is not the purpose of this trea- 
tise to give more than brief mention of some of 
the results of the investigation that followed, and 
that brief allusion only because by a concatena- 
tion of events not entirely fortuitous that subject, 
interesting as it is, has proved to be but the intro- 
duction to a larger one. And in that it has thus 
proved to be an approach to the larger and more 



108 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

extensive subject do I find my justification in 
asking the reader's forbearance in presenting here 
something in general of peyote and the strange 
rehgion which centers around this rather insig- 
nificant appearing and certainly unimposing 
member of the great cactus family. 

The logical order for presenting in outline the 
Mescal religion might appear to be to begin with 
a description of the plant which enters so promi- 
nently into the ceremonies, its botanical position, 
its habitat, and its chemical composition in its 
physiological, therapeutical, and psychological 
effects. But for reasons which may appear later 
it will here serve our purpose better to give a 
short historical sketch of the Mescal religion. 

So far as modern tribes of Indians are con- 
cerned this religion can undoubtedly be traced to 
two tribes quite widely separated in Mexico, — 
the Tarahumares and Huichols. Their widely 
separated habitat and the apparent improbability 
of intercourse between the two tribes, together 
with the striking similarity of the ceremonies and 
their terminology lends strong color to the theory 
that to these tribes the religion came from a com- 
mon source, some tribe probably now extinct, a 
theory borne out by several traditions among 
these tribes, which is further strengthened by the 



PEYOTE RELIGION 109 

fact that at least one name applied to the plant 
bears a strikingly close philological relation to an 
Aztec name similarly applied. 

But that is beside our question. From these 
two tribes the ceremonies have spread northward 
and eastward, first to the Indians of the South- 
west, thence to Oklahoma and elsewhere. It is 
doubtful whether the spread is so wide as indi- 
cated by the statements of Cook and Chief Three 
Fingers, for to some of the northern tribes the 
religion is yet unknown. On the authority of at 
least two chiefs of the Chippeways of Minnesota 
I can state it is unknown to them. Its exact ex- 
tent has not to my knowledge been determined. 

Among the Huichols and the Tarahumares the 
ceremonies of the cult cover not only the Qse of 
the plant in the religious ceremonies proper when 
it is eaten, but in the gathering of the plant as 
well. And this latter is not unimportant, for the 
habitat of the little cactus is removed from the 
homes of both tribes by a long and very arduous 
journey made vastly more arduous by the rigor- 
ous religious duties demanded of the gatherers. 
For a number of days before starting on the jour- 
ney the members of the party, eight or ten or even 
more in number, enter upon ceremonial duties 



no HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

and restrictions demanding definite taboos, self- 
denial, etc. 

From the hour of the preparation for the jom'- 
ney, at the beginning of the excursion, and to the 
end of the trip, and for a number of days after 
the return, some twenty or thirty days in all, every 
act is ceremonially determined. A definite order 
of march is rigidly maintained, no one being per- 
mitted to leave his place without ceremonious con- 
sent. Each meal is eaten, each camp established, 
the disposition of the sleepers, everything deter- 
mined and carried out by ritual. The first plant 
is ceremoniously pulled up and a certain number 
of the first ones gathered are eaten, and under its 
influence, heightened by the rigid food regula- 
tions and fastings, the rest of the trip is made. 

Careful preparations for the hikuli exercises, 
the principal part of the Mescal religion cere- 
monies, are made for some days in advance, after 
a sufficient supply of the peyote is guaranteed by 
a successful gathering excursion. The exercises 
may extend over some days, beginning each night 
at sundown and lasting till sunrise. In general 
the ceremonies may be said in brief to consist of 
the following: The devotees gather into a tepee 
or hut or lodge, and sit around a center slightly 
elevated on which are placed certain ceremonial 



PEYOTE RELIGION 111 

objects. Songs accompanied by constant drum- 
ming are indulged in as the worshipers, as they 
may well be called, slowly consume a sufficient 
amount of the peyote to produce the looked for 
effect. By its influence, aided by the mental atti- 
tude of the partaker, not to say anything of the 
ritual itself, a peculiar and ecstatic state is pro- 
duced in which beautiful visions are seen, and the 
Indians themselves declare that wonderful and 
beneficial therapeutic effects follow the cere- 
monies and the use of the plant. 

It is difficult to account for the rapid spread of 
this religion among the American Indians, espe- 
cially when it is remembered that the United 
States authorities have prohibited the peyote 
traffic, and to secure a supply is made difficult by 
the fact that it, so far as is known, grows in a 
somewhat limited region, viz. Southwestern 
Texas and Northeastern Mexico. But the Okla- 
homa Indians and other tribes get it, as Mr. Cook 
told me, by the very simple expedient of sending 
a man with several trunks to El Paso, and from 
there he goes to where it can be gathered. But it 
is becoming more difficult to secure the plant in 
the quantities used, and the lack of supply to meet 
the growing demand may eventually prove an 
effective check to its spread. 



112 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

I have at times expressed to Philip Cook 
my interest in the subject and have eagerly- 
listened to his description of the ceremonies and 
his elucidations of the efficacy of the plant and 
its intimate relations to the Creator or the Great 
Spirit who after all seems to be the center of the 
Red Man's worship in the final analysis of their 
religion, and I probably at some time expressed 
a desire to accompany them on one of their ex- 
cursions to secure the tribal supply; for not long 
ago I got a characteristically Indian letter from 
him in which he said the supply was getting low, 
and the task of securing it was increasingly diffi- 
cult; that he was preparing to go for another 
supply and would be pleased to have me go 
along, and, he added significantly, as the plant 
must be gathered by ceremony it would be neces- 
sary for one who knew how to do so to go, so in 
true Indian style he suggested that he would be 
glad to have me help him to go, for he accompa- 
nied the invitation by saying that when we had 
gathered our supply, Chief Three Fingers would 
set up a peyote tepee and we three would "go in 
and pray to the God in Heaven." 

The mescal button is in brief the top part of a 
small cactus which grows, as said before, in South- 
western Texas and Northeastern Mexico, I have 



PEYOTE RELIGION 113 

seen it growing only once, a transplanted speci- 
men at the Carnegie Deseret Laboratory near 
Tucson, Arizona. Like many others of the cactus 
family it has a variety of names, given by differ- 
ent authorities, among which are the following: 
Anhaloniu7}i lewinii; Anhalonium wilUa7nsii var 
lewinii; Lophophora williainsii; Lophopkora wil- 
liamsHj var lewinii; and even Echinocactus, But 
perhaps by any other name its produced visions 
would be as entrancing. Its description I shall 
not attempt here. 

Chemically studied by Ewell, of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, under Doctor 
Wiley, it seems to yield two or three alkaloids, 
and to these are due its physiological, psychologi- 
cal, and therapeutic effects, and its pathological as 
well if it has any, which seems doubtful. The 
psychological effects are, as above mentioned, to 
produce color visions, and even of bright ely- 
sians. Doctor Wiley in a letter to me relates an 
amusing experience he had with Doctor Ewell 
while the latter was under peyote influence. Doc- 
tor Ewell, (though an agnostic) while under its 
influence argued verbosely that there was a 
heaven, because he saw it. 

It is doubtless for this effect that the Indians 
take it. But this leads me to revert once more to 



114 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

the question of the spread of this cult. That it is 
as widespread as Cook thinks, is doubtful; that 
it has spread rapidly the past few years and that 
it is still expanding its borders cannot be gain- 
said. Mr. F. W. Hodge, of the Bureau of Eth- 
nology, with whom I discussed this question in his 
office, asserts not only that has it spread far and 
is going farther but that the movement as a study 
becomes of prime importance to ethnologists by 
reason of the fact that this religion has in various 
tribes caused the abandonment of traditions 
which have been tenaciously clung to for three 
hundred years; and that in some tribes the com- 
munity life has been entirely changed since the 
advent of and because of the newer religious 
movement. Why has it thus spread? What is 
there in it which takes such a firm hold on the reli- 
gious nature of the Indian tribes ? I am disposed 
to think that while the Indian childhke propensity 
to do the thing prohibited may to a small extent 
account for it, the real answer may be found in the 
ecstatic state which is produced in the ceremonies, 
and which thus fills a gap or vacuity left by the 
abandonment of other religious forms, such 
abandonment having been forced upon them by 
the advent of civilization and its concomitants. 

And this indicates our next natural step in this 



PEYOTE RELIGION 115 

treatise, viz, a brief glance at some of the reli- 
gious activities of the American Indians and 
other tribes to see how far this ecstatic state 
functions in their tribal life. 



Chapter 6 

Ecstatic States in Primitive Religions, 

It is first necessary here to say something of 
the scope of the term religions. It is perhaps 
easier to classify religions into two great classes, 
right and wrong, or mine and the other fellow's, 
than it is to analyze religion into various con- 
stituents; but it is safe to assume all will grant 
the division into what one thinks about the un- 
seen, or his theology, and what he does as a result 
of this thinking about the unseen, or his ritual. 
They are of course closely related. These are 
both greatly affected by an individual factor, 
emotion, his fear of, hope in, and love towards 
the unseen forces whose good will he desires or 
whose wrath he would appease. Rites of a re- 
ligious character, though blending in practice, 
may be either symbolical and expressive, which 
Tylor terms "the gesture language of theology," 
or the "means of intercourse with and influence 



116 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

upon spiritual beings.'" As for the sacred rites 
of the primitive cults Tylor presents them under 
the classifications of "the rites of Prayer, Sac- 
rifice, and Fasting and other methods of artificial 
ecstasy. Orientation, Lustration."^ Of these it is 
not necessary for us to enter into any discussion 
except in the case of the third, or ecstasy, as 
bearing on our problem. Tylor holds that the 
beliefs of the lower races were based largely on 
the evidences of dreams and visions which were 
looked upon as actual intercourse between human 
and spiritual beings. He holds further that in 
religions which have developed from early phases 
of culture, in all stages physical ecstatic states 
have played a conspicuous part.^ Besides fast- 
ing as a factor in producing this state may be 
mentioned: (1) Fasting accompanied by long 
solitude. (2) The use of drugs and plants con- 
taining narcotics and other alkaloids. (3) Bodily 
exercises and repetition of certain words, causing 
swoons and ecstasy. 

Mooney declared that the American Indian is 
essentially religious and contemplative to the de- 



'Primitive Culture, p. 362. 
Ibid., p. 364. 
Ibid., p. 410. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 117 

gree that almost every act of his daily life is regu- 
lated by his religious beliefs/ Doubtless these 
religious rites of the Indians should be called 
more than mere superstition, as some have de- 
clared, yet it is more than probable that by some 
the savage mind has been credited with a larger 
religious reasoning power than he really has. 

For the purposes of our examination it is not 
necessary to define religion more closely than to 
say that it is the conscious attitude towards un- 
seen powers or beings beUeved to have influence, 
benign or malignant, upon the believer. 

It was formerly held that striking similarity 
between geographically separated religions indi- 
cated a historic connection between the peoples 
concerned ; but more recently it is held that these 
striking similarities simply indicate the wonder- 
ful uniformity with which the human mind works 
under similar conditions; that is to say, given 
similar conditions with peoples widely separated 
and from those peoples will be wrought results 
which are similar. This view premises a psy- 
chological basis for religion. This cardinal and 
basic truth holds equally true for the arts, the law, 
and social institutions. This of course does not 



^"Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees," Annual Report of 
the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1885-86, p. 319. 



118 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

preclude borrowing, which is an ethnically im- 
portant phenomenon. The importance of the 
study of primitive cults from which may have 
evolved the higher ethnic and universal religions 
is similar to the importance of the biological study 
of cell formation and structure of the simplest 
living organisms to discover the basic principles 
underlying the activities of higher structures. 

The primitive savage man is characterized by 
simplicity of mind and rigidity of belief. Added 
to this is nervous susceptibility much keener than 
ours. Their reasoning powers are controlled and 
their actions directed by the emotions or feelings. 
Neurotic disorders, especially contagious ones, 
are not uncommon among them. In general they 
are more inclined than we are to yield to sensory 
impressions. Castren, the traveler, tells how a 
sudden blow on the outside of a tent occupied by 
Samoyeds will sometimes startle the occupants 
into spasms; and Livingstone pathetically tells 
of young slaves who died of "a broken heart," 
when they heard the music and songs of villagers 
whom they could not join in the revelry. The 
undeveloped mind seems characterized by two 
traits which are common among civilized people 
and quite universal among savages, viz, accepting 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 119 

the idea as being subjectively true, and subordi- 
nating reason to feelings or emotion.^ 

While Spencer and Lord Avebury (Sir John 
Lubbock) declare that there have been primitive 
races which have been without religion, Brinton 
asserts quite to the contrary, saying that the 
statements that there have been races of primitive 
peoples without religion have been based, so far 
as evidence is concerned, upon the reports of mis- 
sionaries and travelers who have been untrained 
and unscientific observers. Without doubt re- 
ligion takes a deep hold upon the savage life ; and 
much of the savage's activities are governed by 
ceremony. 

The theories presented in attempts to account 
for the universality of religion among all tribes 
of men are varied and conflicting, and it is rather 
beside our task to present them here. We shall 
therefore pass to an examination of some of the 
ceremonies in primitive cults in which states of 
ecstasy or their approximation are produced or 
appear. 

The Ghost Dance, 

A discussion of ceremonies among the Ameri- 
can Indians producing, or in which appears the 



^Brinton's "Religions of Primitive Peoples," p. 15. 



130 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

ecstastic state, ought at least to briefly refer to 
the Ghost-Dance Religion which some years ago 
had such an astonishing spread among many of 
the American tribes and which played such an 
important role in the Sioux outbreak of 1890/ 

Hesunanian was the expected Messiah of the 
Indians who would come to redeem the Ameri- 
can Indians, and restore their lost prestige and 
give them again control of the lands. All the 
dead warriors would return at a given time from 
the Happy Hunting Grounds, and joining the 
living remnants of the broken tribes would in 
fierce and sudden onslaught drive the white 
usurpers out of the land or destroy them. This 
hope of restoration to their golden age became 
their faith. As is stated in another part of this 
treatise, the religion of the Ghost Dance, its 
teachings, rituals, songs, had been revealed to a 
young woman of the Algonquins. The first dance 
was held on Walker Lake Reservation, and the 
religion spread rapidly from tribe to tribe, new 
features being added to it by the various tribes. 
It took great hold on the Indians. 



^James Mooney, of the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology, 
spent some three years investigating this strange religion 
and the Bureau published his investigations in full in its 
14th Annual Report. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN REI>IGIONS 121 

The dance itself is a slow, rhythmic, circular 
one, with a "dragging step," kept up for hours. 
One after another of the zealous dancers becomes 
ecstatic, finally reaching a state of catalepsy, 
when they remain standing rigidly fixed, or fall. 
In either case they are carried off from the danc- 
ing ground and allowed to remain in this ecstatic 
condition undisturbed. Coming out of the trance 
they tell of their dreams and visions and what 
they heard, always sure of eager, attentive listen- 
ers. 

After the Sioux outbreak the Dance gradually 
died out. The failure of the dead warriors to 
make good in coming to the succor of their strug- 
gling descendants under Sitting Bull's lead may 
have had much to do with the loss of faith in the 
religion. 

Initiation Ceremonies. 

Among the American Indians, wherever the 
white man's methods and customs have not 
changed in a great measure the tribal manner of 
living, the food supply was practically com- 
munally owned. Refusal to share one's food with 
his fellows, or even a stranger, was so contrary 
to tribal customs that it was extremely rare or 
quite unknowTi. Tradition, custom, and com- 



123 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

munity sentiment all declared food to be common 
property. Natm-ally, therefore, the most valu- 
able men to the tribe were those who could supply 
the greatest amount of necessities. Surrounded 
as most tribes were by almost multitudinous dan- 
gers, next to supplying food in importance stood 
the matter of protection ; so the men most skilled 
in hunting and fishing and the women who could 
produce the most corn or gather the most fruit 
or seeds were the most valuable members of the 
tribe; while close to them in importance in the 
community life were those individuals whose 
alertness and keenness enabled them to foresee, 
and therefore forewarn the tribe of dangers 
threatening the tribal life or peace, and whose 
prowess could do much to ward off danger im- 
pending. And the skill, ability, industry, adroit- 
ness, keenness, cunning, alertness, or prowess of 
these welfare-conserving and community-inter- 
est-serving members were common topics of dis- 
cussion. In fact, the virtues and abilities of the 
members of the tribe, particularly of the males, 
were commented on almost constantly, from boy- 
hood to old age. Of these discussions the 
younger members of the tribe were constantly 
aware; so the ideal of tribal virtues was ever be- 
fore theminds of the young Indians. Further- 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 133 

more, the simple democracy of the tribal govern- 
ment necessitated the recognition of official 
capacity, and promotion to these simple though 
important offices was usually determined by use- 
fulness to the tribe/ So the ambitions of the 
younger members were greatly stimulated in a 
variety of directions, and the youth soon began to 
look forward to the particular ceremonies which 
would usher them into full tribal privileges and 
rights. Thus to the initiation ceremonies were at- 
tached the greatest of interest. 

While there are a variety of ceremonies, dances 
particularly, among primitive races in which the 
ecstatic states are produced, the more important 
of them being so generally connected with initia- 
tion ceremonies, we shall here confine our exami- 
nation largely to them. So general are these 
initiation rites that they may be termed almost 
universal, the object being to prepare the novitiate 
for the larger responsibilities of tribal activities, 
the solemn ceremonies being held at the momen- 
tous crisis when the boy enters the portal of 
manhood and the girl is budding into potential 
motherhood. These initiation rites are so wide- 



'Powell, in 7th Annual Report, Bureau American Ethnology, 
p. 35. 



124 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

spread that they may be termed characteristic of 
primitive Hfe. 

Closely guarding the secrets of the initiation 
ceremonies and the knowledge therein imparted 
concerning the various mysteries, there is de- 
veloped by the young men a curiosity which 
makes them only too willing to enter the cere- 
monies, even though it is well known among them 
that the ordeal means the undergoing of severe 
physical suffering and even mental anguish. But 
refusal to submit to the rites in most tribes means 
degradation by being handed over to the women 
and children, to associate with them, and even to 
wear woman's dress in some cases. 

These initiation rites bind the participants to- 
gether with fraternal bonds, and their importance 
in promoting tribal solidarity can scarcely be 
overemphasized. This fraternal sense of solidar- 
ity is at basis the essence of tribal control and 
existence, — the yielding of obedience to the 
elders taught in exercise functionizes later to the 
benefit of the community by promoting tribal in- 
terests. 

Among the Algonquins each Indian is 
guarded by a manitou, which protects, advises, 
guides. This manitou is determined by the form 
which appears to him when he is passing through 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 125 

the severe fasting ordeal. It may be a snake, a 
bird, a fish, or a beast, or some other animate or 
inanimate object. This manitou is represented 
on the Indian's person by some portion of the ob- 
ject, a bone, a feather, a skin, or a tuft of hair, 
and is the Indian's "medicine," to which he per- 
forms at times rituals, though the honorific fea- 
tures are directed towards the deific thing which 
the "medicine" symbolizes. The "medicine" is 
propitiated by tobacco offerings, thanked in pros- 
perity and chided in adversity. A medicine un- 
productive of beneficent results is liable to ex- 
patriation and another substituted.^ The youth 
of the Algonquin early begin the practice of se- 
clusion with fasting, the earlier fastings being 
short, and with the chief idea being preparation. 
But during adolescence they become more serious 
and of the utmost importance in maturity, when 
the fast and vigil are had with the distinct pur- 
pose in view of seeing or hearing that which will 
reveal something of the mystery of life. In this 
mental attitude they go determined to see, hear, 
feel. It is then they see strange things, hear 
prophetic warnings and encouragements, and see 
or hear or sense an all-pervaditig presence, — gain 



^See Frazer's "Totemism and Exogamy," volume 3, pp. 373, 
374; also Francis Parkman's "The Jesuits in North America." 



126 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

hidden revelation. Some see, some hear, and 
what is heard comes with authority. It was 
represented to the Sioux and Kickapoo Indians 
that this was the source of the famous Ghost 
Dance, — that its step, ritual, song, and its teach- 
ings w^ere revealed to the young woman who later 
told it all to her people.^ 

Women as well as men fast, the fast being ob- 
served always at the advent of puberty. 

The following quotation from a Fox Indian on 
an experience in the sweat lodge is of interest: 
"Often one will cut one's self over the arms and 
legs, slitting one's self only through the skin. 
It is done to open up many passages for the 
manitou to pass into the body. The manitou 
comes from the place of its abode in the stone. 
It becomes roused by the heat of the fire, and 
proceeds out of the stone when the water is 
sprinkled on it. It comes out in the steam, and 
in the steam it enters the body wherever it finds 
entrance. It moves up and down and all over in- 
side the body, driving out everything that inflicts 
pain. Before the manitou returns to the stone it 
imparts some of its nature to the body. That is 
why one feels so well after having been in the 



^See William Jones's "The Algonquin Manitou," in Junior 
American Folk Lore, volume 18 (1905), p. 187. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 127 

sweat lodge." — ''Among the Oglala Dakotas," 
11th Annual Report, Bureau American Eth- 
nology. 

Separate ceremonies, religious and serious, are 
held celebrating the advent of girls and boys into 
puberty. The boys are inducted by one of two 
ceremonies, the ''wohduze'' ceremony or the 
"bear" dance. Each follows individual prepara- 
tion of fasting and self -mortification, and dreams 
significant of his life must have been had. The 
private religious rites precede and follow the pub- 
lic ceremony. The public one ushers him into the 
responsibilities and dangers of the tribe life ; and 
according to old customs the youth takes a wife 
only after he has proved his prowess. 

The animal which appears to the man during 
his religious fasting determines the secret society 
he shall join. All are named after animals.^ 

In the ''Dahpike'' or ''Nahpike" ceremony of 
the Hidatsa Indians, the participants fast four 
days, dancing and singing in sight of the food, 
and mutilate themselves quite similarly to the 
Mandans, as described by Catlin.^ Strips of skin 
are cut from the arm, from wrist to shoulder, or 



^Dorsey in 11th Annual Report, Bureau American Eth- 
nology. 

Tage 503, 11th Annual Report, Bureau American Eth- 
nology, Art. Dorsey. 



138 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

from the back. Skewers are thrust through the 
skin and torn out by attaching heavy dragging 
weights, etc. These horrible ordeals are passed 
by young men wishing to become braves or to 
rank as adult members of the tribe. One observer 
saw children of six or seven years subjected to 
these tortures. 

Mr. George Catlin, who traveled quite exten- 
sively among some of the American tribes and 
with great patience made large numbers of oil 
paintings of persons, habitats, utensils, etc., as- 
serts that all Indian tribes are religious, worship- 
ful, many going to extreme lengths in denying 
and humbling themselves. He credits all tribes 
with believing in God (Great Good Spirit) and 
the Evil (or Bad) Spirit, in future life and com- 
pensations.^ Catlin has been somewhat dis- 
credited as an ethnological observer, and it is a 
question of how much of his own belief he pro- 
jected into his interpretation of the ceremonies 
and rituals he observed. But as an artist he 
proved to be a fairly accurate delineator of cere- 
monies and rituals, and has left us some pretty 
good descriptions of some really horrible cere- 
monies practiced, particularly those among the 
Mandans. 



^■Smithsonian Report, 1885, part 2, p. 351. 



ECS'lATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 1;29 

The Mandan youths, to appease Good and Evil 
Sph'its and to secure passage into future elysian 
fields, subject themselves to "horrid and sicken- 
ening cruelties." To establish a reputation for 
bravery the young Mandan will enter a period of 
fasting to be terminated only by the extent of his 
endurance, — from four to seven days, during 
which time he seeks a solitary place on a hill or 
cliff, and cries constantly to Omahank-Numakshi 
and the higher powers for aid/ He does penance, 
makes sacrifices, even mutilates himself, beseech- 
ing the First Man or the Lord of Life to indicate 
his guardian spirit. When in this excited state 
he dreams of an animal or some other object, that 
he assumes as his guardian spirit." 

The young men on arriving at manhood are 
conducted through severe ordeals of privation and 
torture calculated to demonstrate which ones are 
endowed with the best enduring qualities de- 
manded of energetic braves and indomitable 
leaders. 

These terrible exercises are held when the 
willow leaves have fully expanded. On the 
second day about fifty young men entered Medi- 



'Dorsey, "A Study of Siouan Cults," p. 502, 11th Annual 
Report, Bureau American Ethnology. 

"Dorsey, "A Study of Siouan Cults," 11th Annual Report, 
Bureau American Ethnology, p. 508. 



130 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

cine-lodge with medicine bags in hands, and for 
four days under careful watch they were kept in 
the lodge without food or drink or sleep, prepara- 
tory to the terrible ordeals. Each day the Bull 
Dance is performed, four times on first, eight 
times on second, twelve times on third, sixteen on 
fourth. On fourth day the candidates pass 
through great tortures. They are hung up by 
skewers in skin of shoulders. Buffalo skulls 
and other weights are tied to legs, by skewers 
passed through the skin and gradually torn out 
by gravity or later by dragging. Fingers cut 
off, usually the little one. All the time the chiefs 
watched to see who was most stout-hearted. The 
candidate, to show his great fortitude, smiles when 
cut, and the test is to see who can hang longest 
by the flesh before he faints, and who is up soon- 
est. With weights attached to skin they run 
races around the camp till they faint, and are 
then dragged around till skulls are detached by 
tearing out. 

Captain Maynadier says that he noticed every 
male Mandan over ten years old had scars of 
skewers and cords on breasts or shoulders. The 
few who refused to undergo the torture were 
banished from men to the society of women and 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 131 

children, to wear women's dress and do women's 
work. 

Among the Nintun Indians of California a 
ceremony is performed at maturity of the girl 
(twelve to fourteen years) by her village friends. 
All the surrounding villages are invited to the 
dance. As a preparation the girl must abstain 
from all animal food for three days, confining her 
diet to a limited allowance of acorn porridge. 
During her fast she must remain alone in the 
woods, no one being permitted on pain of death 
to touch or even approach her. To break her 
fast she eats a sacred porridge called Khlup, 
made of roasted buckeyes. The eating of this 
porridge consecrates her to womanhood. The 
ceremonies may cover several days. At the con- 
clusion of the ceremonies the chief takes her hand 
and ceremoniously dances with her before the as- 
sembled dancers.^ 

Among the Shastika the puberty dance is held 
for the girl, she being compelled to fast for ten or 
twelve days, abstaining from animal meat, and 
shortening other rations.^ 

The Maider have a secret society among the 



^See Tribes of California, 1877, United States Geological 
Department publication, pp. 235, 236. 
'Powers' Tribes of California, p. 250. 



139 mciii'Jt rowicHS oi' man 

men allied Kiiincli, llic "Older of Manhood, " 
Into vvliieli (he hoys nre iiiilijiied nl nhoul twelve 
yenrs of Ji^c. Not Jill of the trihe's hoys are 
'mitijiled, however. Herein ji new njune, his virile 
one, is ^iven each hoy, and for icn days following 
he niiisl eat no llesh, only acorn porridge.' 

'I'he first /^Tass daiiee of Ihe Nishinain Indians, 
i^iNcn at the lii'st rain of (he rainy season, is 
entei-ed into so enthnsiaslieally hy Ihe men that 
I hey sometimes fall exhansted into a I ranee in 
wliieh they lie for hours. S|)eakin<4' •^•enerally of 
the Cnlirornia Indians, Powers says they have 
shown "eapaeily to endure prolon/^vd and icr- 
rihle sell'-imposed penances or ordeals," usually 
raslin,L»', ehiedy ainon^* the northern trihes. "In 
(heir liahilily lo intense religious I'ren/y, or rather, 
|)erha|)s, a mei'e neiNoiis exaltation and exhaiis- 
lion, i-esnllinL»" from (heir passionate devotion to 
the danee, they espial the AlViean races. The 
same religions heni of mind reveals itself in (he 
stran.L»-e, eioonint;- chanls which they intone while 
ganihlin^'."' 

On dilii>'ent iiupiiry Honrke learned from 
Apache nuMlicine men wliose conlidene(* he liad 
gained, that any young men of the Irihe eould he- 



'Tp. :U)r., :?()(;. Trihos of Cnlifoniia. Powcms. 
Mbul., p. .10C>. 



rx'STAric SI \'n<'uS in hklkiions \x\ 

come "doctors" (dif/i in I lie Apiiclic l;in,nun^o, 
vvliicli is li-jmsliil('(l Sahio hy (lie Mcxic.-iii cni)- 
livcs). I( is ncccssni'v foi' I he cjmdid.Mlc lo con 
vincc his nssocijdcs Miiil lie luis the "^ifr'; llijit 
is lo say, a drcjinici- of di'cnnis, nhlc lo I'jisl loii/j^ 
iun] intcrprcl si^ns .'iiid omens, <'ind lo dcinon- 
slraic Jt sli-oii^- spirilunlily. He wilhdrnvvs IVoni 
society of liis Cellovvs, especijilly nl nielli, in ''liioli 
places" vvliich "were inlerdicled lo llie I srnelilcs."' 

I'lie youlli of llie Creek Iiidiniis spends nj) lo 
twelve months in sohtude, I'Mstin^' ;m inci'eiisin^' 
len<4lh ()(' time ench nev\ moon, nntil ne;ir the 
close he must nnder/^o u Cnst of nine djiys, in whicli 
he hns the v ision which snpphes his mechcine. He- 
fore the fast is ovci* he mnst ohtnin the ohject of 
his mcchcinc luid place a portion of it in his medi- 
cine ha<^". 

yVmon;^- the Tuscai-ora Indians the yonn^' men 
ai'c |)nt lhron;L»h a ceremony called lfns(/U(n(n(in^', 
lo he lan^^hl ohedience. The "house of eoiM'cc- 
tion" is a lar^'c and strong' cahin, where in a, 
a dai'kencd room the hoys arc kept starving* for 
days, compelled to di'ink maddening" concoctions 
and live on vile foods for five oi' six weeks, wherc^ 

'Soo Medicine Men of l\u\ Apaclic, !)l,li Anmiiil lt<M><>it '^u- 
icnii I'iUuioIoKy, p|). 452, /IT).'}. 

'l*'iaz('i-'s 'I'olomism and l<].x()ganiy, vo'lumc ;'>, j). 102. 



134 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

they rave and howl dismally. Some do not sur- 
vive the ordeal, and others are brought out lean 
and changed, and dumb for days. 

The Hupa Indians of California have initia- 
tion ceremonies for the adolescent girl. As a 
preparation for the ceremony the maiden is com- 
pelled to fast for nine days, away from the tribe 
and the men in particular. The ceremony is ter- 
minated by a dance in which the chief takes the 
maiden by the hand and welcomes her as a woman 
of the tribe.^ .This tribe holds other dances in 
which men fast till almost skeletons in order to 
acquire power, through visions, dreams, etc. 

Among the Keltas of California the Shamans 
believe themselves able to converse with spirits 
in their waking hours as well as in dreams. Vi- 
sions in dreams is common among the California 
Indians.^ 

Fasting in certain ceremonies is common to 
Karok, Yurok, Tolowa.^ 

Among the Ojibwa Indians there are three 
classes of Shamans or mystery men, — the Mide, 



"^See Powers* Tribes of California, in volume 3 of Contri- 
butioins on North American Indians, p. 85, et seq. 
^Ibid., Powers' Tribes of California, p. 91. 
Ibid. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 135 

the Jes-sak-kid, and the Wabeno/ The Wabeno 
or "men of the dawn," or "eastern men," have a 
profession httle understood, according to 
Mooney, and their number is hmited, and School- 
craft says some writers hold them to be of modern 
origin.^ 

Mooney says the Wabeno act individually, and 
have no society. In his youth the Wabeno leaves 
his home and undergoes a fast lasting for a num- 
ber of days, and in the dreams and visions had 
during this fast is he prompted as to his life's 
course. On occasions of successful issue of enter- 
prises due to the assistance of the supernatural 
powers of the Wabeno, feasts and dances are 
given, of a boisterous character, where the Wa- 
beno gives demonstrations of his prowess, by tak- 
ing up red hot coals, bathing his hands in boiling 
water or syrup, without apparent discomfort, etc. 

The Jessakkid is a seer and prophet, and the 
Indians think he can reveal hidden truths. They 
practice their arts singly, and have no associa- 
tion, hence no initiation. The gift which makes 
them capable of becoming Jessakkid is supposed 



'"The Midewiwin of the Ojibwa," by Haffman, in 7th An- 
nual Report Bureau Ethnology. 

^"Information Respecting the History, Condition and Pros- 
pects of the Indian Tribes of the United States." Phil. 1851, 
p. 369, volume 1. 



136 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

to come from the god of thunder, Animiki. Few 
get the gift, received usually in youth when un- 
dergoing fasting and prayer, wherein visions 
and dreams appear. They are skilled in disen- 
gaging themselves from bindings, cords, etc. 

The Mide is a true Shaman. They have a so- 
ciety, with elaborate initiation ceremonies. They 
are medicine men and exorcists. 

An important event in the life of a youth of 
an Ojibwa is his first fast, when he leaves his home 
and seeks seclusion in the forest. There he fasts 
for days till in a hysterical or ecstatic state he 
experiences visions and hallucinations. The first 
object appearing in such vision is adopted by the 
youth as a personal mystery, guardian, or tutelary 
spirit, and is subsequently mentioned by him only 
after offering sacrifice.' The faster may become 
impressed to become Mide. If so he begins 
preparation. 

Among the Ojibwa, after the birth of a male 
child it is customary to have a feast participated 
in by friends and family by invitation. A Mide 
(medicine man) is designated to serve as god- 
father, and to dedicate the child. The special pur- 
suit to which he is designated is determined by 



'The Midewiwin of the Ojibwa," by Hoffman, p. 163. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 137 

the visions of the Mide. If to the ''Grand Medi- 
cine," then a special preceptor is by the parents 
procured to prepare the boy to enter the Mide so- 
ciety/ The initiation into the various degrees of 
the Midewiwin is accompanied by long and elabo- 
rate ceremonies, covering (at intervals) several 
years. 

Among the Salishan Indians of British Colum- 
bia, when a girl reaches maturity she must go 
alone to the hills and undergo a long period of re- 
tirement. At its close, she records her experiences 
by drawing a number of rude figures in red paint 
on a bowlder, indicating the rites she has per- 
formed and the visions she has had.^ Such petro- 
glyphs, religious in character, are to be found in 
every continent, and represent, according to 
Brinton, the "beginnings of the art of drawing."^ 

Two Crows and Joseph Le Flesch heard or 
were told that for unnumbered generations boys 
approaching manhood were told to go to seques- 
tered places and fasting for days call upon Wa- 
kanda for aid. They usually believed that they 
received communication from divine sources. 
Fasting was always practiced when it was de- 



'Ibid., p. 278. 

^Bulletin American Museum Natural History, volume 8, 
p. 222. 

^Brinton's Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 236. 



138 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

sired to obtain superhuman power or assistance 
or to acquire a transfer of superhuman power. 
Hunting parties were required to fast four days 
at beginning of hunt, while the captains of war 
jDarties fasted as a preparation for the campaign/ 

Among the Omahas, the boy when about eight 
years old undergoes a fast of one day, spending 
the time on a cliff crying to Wakanda to have 
pity on him and make him great. At sixteen the 
fast is lengthened to two days, without fire or 
food or drink, while at about nineteen the ordeal 
is lengthened to four days. Many were con- 
vinced that Wakanda spoke to them.^ This tribe 
also have dances of those who communicate with 
various animals and ghosts, etc. 

The Zuni hold to the belief that each male 
child, to insure happiness and success must before 
completing his fourth year be breathed upon by 
supernatural beings. This is accomplished by 
an elaborate ceremony of dramatic personation 
every four years. It is noteworthy that the vows 
of the child are taken vicariously, to be renewed 
by the boy on attaining the age of discretion. 



"'Siouan Cults," by Dorsey, in 11th Annual Report, Bureau 
of Ethnology, p. 390. 

'Omaha Sociology, by Dorsey, in 3d Annual Report, Bureau 
American Ethnology, 1881-82, p. 266. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 139 

Opportunity for this renewal is given by an an- 
nual ceremony/ 

Among the Chitimacha Indians there are 
priests or Shamans (termed differently in the 
language of the common people and that of the 
nobility) whose duties are connected with the 
supernatural. Each village has at least one 
Shaman and each Shaman has an apprentice who 
succeeds to the position of Shaman on the death 
of his master. 

When the youth of the Chitimacha reaches 
manhood a ceremony is held in the temple, de- 
signed rather to inure to hunger and thirst than 
to impart certain mysteries of the worship of 
their main deity, the Noon-Day Sun. Adorned 
with ribbons, feathers, paint, and small gourds, 
dressed only in breech cloths, they continue fast- 
ing and without tasting water for six days, being 
led in dancing almost continuously by their 
ephori, or disciplinarians. But in order to secure 
a personal guardian spirit each boy and girl un- 
dergoes a solitary fast and confinement, when they 
are confined until they dream of the animal to be 
their helper." This old religion lasted till the 



^See 5tli Report, Bureau Ethnology, 1883-84, pp. LII and 
548. 

""Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi," Bulletin 43, 
Bureau Ethnology, pp. 352, 353. 



140 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Indians became Catholic some half century or 
more ago. 

The Nachez often fasted to insure certain re- 
sults or guarantee certain accomplishments/ 

The Natchez Shaman or doctor does not sepa- 
rate medicine from magic ; and in order to acquire 
the necessary powers he shuts himself in his 
cabin and for nine days, without food and with 
water only, undisturbed by others who are for- 
bidden to disturb him, he makes a continuous 
noise with his rattle of gourd and shells and in- 
vokes the Spirit to speak and acknowledge him as 
doctor and magician. He cries, howls, contorts, 
and quakes, foams, and grows short of breath. 
But at the termination of his nine days of train- 
ing he issues from his retreat triumphant, boast- 
ing of conversation with the Spirit and of the re- 
ceipt of the gift of healing, and power over 
storms and weather.^ 

Voduism. 

This strange cult, extant to some degree among 
the negroes of Louisiana, and to a far greater ex- 
tent in Hayti, has had such a powerful effect in 



^"Indians of the Lower Mississippi," in Bulletin 43, Bureau 
Ethnology, p. 177. 
'Ibid., p. 178. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 141 

promoting solidarity among the negroes, particu- 
larly in Hayti, that it justifies a brief mention 
here. 

The word vodu is from the Ewe language, of 
the slave coast of East Africa, and is general, not 
specific. "Vodu worship" means "god worship," 
and was probably introduced into Hayti from the 
Ewe country in the following manner: In 1727 
Ardra and Whydah, of the Ewe country, were 
invaded by an inland race seeking a coast outlet. 
The prisoners were sold as slaves and many were 
carried to Hayti. In the Republic of Hayti 
there are about 50,000 whites, 60,000 mulattoes, 
and 800,000 negroes. Domingo Republic, in the 
eastern part of the island, adds another 200,000. 

The vodu practices introduced into Hayti by 
the Ewe slaves spread rapidly, despite the stren- 
uous efforts of the planters to suppress them. 
Probably some of the Ewe slaves found their way 
from Hayti into Louisiana. In fact in 1809 some 
French planters with their slaves sought refuge 
in Cuba, and later went to New Orleans. 

So rapidly did the cult and practices spread 
and so tremendously did its secret power aid the 
Papaloi or vodu priests in defying the authorities, 
that in 1804 France abandoned her settlements 
in Hayti, and Spain did so in 1821. They tired 



142 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

of contending against the power of the priests. 
Even educated negroes joined the orgies and 
swore to support the vodu system. The oaths 
taken are terrible and are made to the serpent god, 
who is implacable, and is represented by a python 
priest and a pythoness, called the Serpent Papa 
and Mamma. The python god is kept in a box 
and worshiped as a god, "the Vodu," being con- 
sidered a superhuman and omnipotent being, 
guiding the events of the world with full knov, i- 
edge of past and future events, his communica- 
tions to his worshipers coming only through an 
arch priest and a negress raised to the rank of a 
high priestess. At the ceremonies sacrifices are of- 
fered and it is strongly believed that even human 
sacrifices, spoken of as "goats without horns," 
are offered to the serpent god, the lungs and heart 
being eaten raw and the blood drunk, thus adding 
virtue and vitality to the drinker. 

The serpent is aroused only at night and with 
secret ceremonies. The priestess, standing on a 
box, at the command of the priest the snake is 
brought and the priestess, trembling, with con- 
tortions and convulsions, speaks as the oracle of 
divinity, prophesying, exhorting, amid the clang- 
ing of bells and the acclaim of the devotees. 

Fresh oaths are administered, offerings sac- 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS IW 

rificed (goat or human), each devotee partaking 
of the blood with horrible oaths of fealty to the 
cult. Then follow wild orgies, drinking, dancing 
till some swoon and are dragged off. General 
license follows and another date is set for re- 
newals. 

The Haytian Government supports this "re- 
ligion," considering it a firm prop to the inde- 
pendence of the country. 

Africa. The Vey tribes of Liberia have regu- 
lar institutions of instruction for men to learn 
their commonwealth relation, initiation being a 
perquisite to office holding. Deep scarifications 
on the back are the symbol of initiation, acciden- 
tal similar scarifications subjecting the bearer to 
severe punishment. 

The Transvaal tribes hold circumcision lodge 
every four or five years, and public opinion forces 
the uninitiated to submit to the ceremonies, how- 
ever rigorous or severe. 

The Hottentot boys remain with their mothers 
till about the eighteenth year, when by an initia- 
tion ceremony, Andersmachen, they are installed 
with the men and converse with them exclusively, 
while before it was the reverse. After initiation 
the young men may even abuse their mothers 



144 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

with impunity, to show their graduation from 
maternal tuition. 

The Andaman Islanders observe fasting 
periods which begin before puberty and may con- 
tinue up to five years. Many taboos are placed 
upon favorite articles of food, such as turtle, 
honey, pork, and fish. The fast is terminated by 
edict from the tribal chief. The fasting is a test 
of endurance and fitness to become a tribal mem- 
ber, and of ability and fitness to become the head 
and support of a family. 

Fijians are compelled to attend two Nangas 
before they are considered fully initiated men. 
This means a probation of perhaps two years or 
more. 

When war, pestilence, or other causes have 
prevented the holding of initiation ceremonies for 
a number of years among the Fijians, in the 
Nanga ceremonies may be seen bearded men, 
fathers, with young boys being ceremoniously 
made tribe members, the importance of the step 
making them willing to submit. These ceremo- 
nies are open only to native born tribesmen. The 
same has been observed in the Barium cere- 
monies of the Finsch Haven natives of Kaiser 
Wilhelm Land. 

In the initiation ceremonies of the Elema tribes 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 145 

of the Papuan Gulf, illegitimate children are 
excluded. 

In the Ona tribes of Tierra del Fuego the 
youth are taken through initiation ceremonies of 
considerable severity, and only to the initiated 
men are the tribal privileges extended. The un- 
initiated are barbarians and belong with the 
women and children. In extreme cases the un- 
initiated are banished or exterminated. 

The men in this tribe have ceremonies designed 
to frighten the women into unquestioning obe- 
dience. During the long winter nights the youth 
are taught the inferiority of women and that only 
to intimate men friends and their fathers must 
their real minds be revealed. Brotherly ties, or 
man to man friendships, are closer than between 
opposite sex. 

The period of probation in these tribes may 
cover two years or more. 

Among the Siamese it is believed that the gods 
speak at times through the mouth of a woman 
who is thus favored of the gods. Careful prep- 
arations are made by her to receive the mes- 
sages and reveal to her devotees the places where 
lost articles may be found, though she professes 
to have no subsequent memory of what transpires 
while she is in the opneustic trance. 



146 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Among the Basutos the initiation rites fall into 
three groups, with an interim of three years be- 
tween each group. 

Some of the Yoruba tribes require the youth to 
remain under control of elders till he has killed a 
man. 

No small part of the life of an Australian is 
passed in magical ceremonies. Some of the cere- 
monies, the intichiuma ceremonies for instance, 
may be prolonged over several months. These 
have the appearance of being magical rites to 
promote success in securing a supply of food, and 
often, but not always, accompany the initiation 
ceremonies of the young men. 

The medicine men of the Australians are called 
"Blackfellow doctors," and these have much to 
do with the magic, charms, etc., in which the 
natives so generally believe. 

Among the native Australian tribes especially 
do the initiation ceremonies play a most impor- 
tant role in the tribal life, having sociological as 
well as biological purposiveness. 

To the casual observer an Australian tribe 
seems to have no tangible or recognized form of 
government; but closer inspection reveals that 
there are well-understood tribal laws and cus- 
toms, according to and within the limits of which 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 117 

the individual must regulate his individual and 
social actions, — the relations of the sexes, connu- 
bial and general, the secret ceremonies, the selec- 
tion of foods, etc. Violation of the regulations 
involves the infliction of punishment of varying 
degree of severit}^ up to and including death; 
though in many instances obedience to such cus- 
toms or laws is secured not by the fear of bodily 
infliction by authoritative act of tribal function- 
aries, but by dread of supernatural punishment, 
such fear being inculcated by teaching from 
earliest childhood. Behind this impersonal power 
or authority stand public opinion and a belief in 
the supernatural, though with the majority of 
Australian tribes a belief in spiritual interference 
with mundane affairs seems greatly outweighed 
or overshadowed by a belief in magic or the effect 
of charms.^ 

But at times this impersonal power seems to 
exercise functions closely simulating something 
quite other than ethereal. If a man break one of 
the rigid marriage laws a council of headmen is 
more than likely to follow. Should after long 
deliberation he be determined guilty and a sen- 
tence of death passed upon him, not to this "im- 



^See Hewitt's "Native Tribes of Southeastern Australia," 
pp. 295, 296. 



148 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

personal power" alone is left the task of execut- 
ing the sentence, but a party is organized whose 
object is to carry out the sentence, and the 
offender against the tribal regulations knows 
quite well that he has other than an "impersonal 
power" to deal with.' 

As with many or all primitive tribes, in many 
of the crimes committed retribution is left to the 
individuals affected more immediately by the 
offense. There are, however, crimes held to be 
against the tribe which are dealt with by tribal 
authorities. Among such crimes are murder by 
magic, violation of the exogamous laws, or be- 
traying the secrecy of the initiation ceremony." 

Headmen exercise authority and this position 
is gained largely through age and experience, 
though to enjoy the greatest influence necessi- 
tates the union of age with reputation for having 
been or being a great fighter, medicine man, or 
orator. Where all these characteristics are found 
combined is found the greatest influence and 
authority granted by common consent, though a 
tendency is found in some tribes to determine the 
succession by primogeniture. The tribal council, 



^See Spencer and Gillen, ''Native Tribes of Central Aus- 
tralia," p. 15. 

"See Howitt's "Native Tribes of Southeastern Australia," 
p. 354. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 149 

composed of the old men of the tribe, automatic 
in its creation and sittings, is quite general and 
determines much of the tribal movements and ac- 
tions. The younger the man the less he has to 
say. The uninitiated boys look forward for years 
to when they shall have qualified to sit in this 
council, a fact which goes far towards engender- 
ing and preserving an absorbing interest in tribal 
affairs on the part of the young. Council pro- 
ceedings are rigorously kept secret. Ethnologi- 
cal students desiring to observe the council cere- 
monies have been permitted to do so only after 
they themselves have learned the native language 
and become so familiar with the initiation cere- 
monies that they have been accepted by the 
natives as fully initiated members of the tribe. 
Dire calamities are threatened against those who 
reveal its secrets.^ 

It is quite generally believed by ethnologists 
who have observed the Australian tribes, that 
practically every native Australian under normal 
tribal conditions is subjected to initiation cere- 
monies before being admitted to full tribal privi- 
leges and secrets. 

Rarely are the initiation ceremonies of a tribe 



^See Howitt's "Native Tribes of Southeastern Australia," 
pp. 297 to 322. 



150 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

peculiar to it. The tribes usually intermarry 
with certain other tribes, and there is a free inter- 
change of attendance upon and participation in 
these ceremonies. General types are therefore 
distinguished.^ Howitt dividing the Australian 
tribes into two great classes, the eastern and west- 
ern, describes those of the Coast Murring tribes 
as being typical of the eastern type, which with 
certain variations prevail. And of the general 
resemblance to the western he says: "The princi- 
ples which underlie the ceremonies of the western 
type are in some points the same as those of the 
eastern type. The youths are separated from the 
control of their mothers and from the companion- 
ship of their sisters, are usually taboo as to women 
during their novitiate and are generally initiated 
by the men of the other moiety of the tribe. The 
inculcation of obedience to the elders and observ- 
ance of the tribal morality is common to both, but 
they are sharply distinguished by the rites of cir- 
cumcision and subincision, and the practice of 
bleeding at the Wilyaru and similar ceremonies."^ 
It is not here necessary to set out all the details 
of even the typical ones so well reported by 



^See Howitt's "Native Tribes of Southeastern Australia, 
p. 512. 

'Ibid., p. 676. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 151 

Howitt; but of some of the features it may be 
well to speak as having a bearing upon our sub- 
ject. 

The time of holding the ceremonies, after de- 
termining whether there is a sufficient number of 
boys to be made men, is fixed by consultations 
between the elders of the clans affected, and the 
place is appointed. The invitations sent out, as 
the contingent from each clan arrives (the last 
may not arrive for several weeks) at the ap- 
pointed place, special preliminary ceremonies are 
held. All assembled and the ground prepared 
by that part of the community taking the initia- 
tive, the elaborate ceremonies begin, ceremonies 
which last for days. Only in the preliminary ones 
are the women permitted to participate, it being 
fatal for a woman to even see what goes on, or to 
even look upon the bull-roarer, an instrument 
used in giving the signal calling the men to the 
exact spot and warning the women away. Dur- 
ing the ceremonies each boy is accompanied by 
two guardians who devote all their time caring 
for the boy, teaching him the details of the cere- 
monies, instructing him in manly tribal duties 
and legends, laws and moralities, and revealing 
the secrets kept by the men of the tribe, the func- 
tions of dreams, magic, etc. The boy is in- 



153 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

structed not in any way to show any surprise or 
fear in any part of the ceremonies, and to bear 
without murmur any pain inflicted upon him in 
the ceremonies, and to remember everything he 
sees and hears. 

All the ceremonies connected with the initia- 
tion, crude and nonsensical as they appear, are 
calculated to bring about a striking change in the 
boy's life, to break him away suddenly and com- 
pletely from his past life, and usher him into the 
life in which his connection with his mother is 
severed and he becomes attached to the men, and 
he is made sensible of his duties as a member of 
the tribe who must assume his share of the respon- 
sibilities of the community. And considering the 
social conditions and culture (or lack of it) of the 
Australian, these ceremonies are probably well 
calculated to most emphatically impress these 
facts upon the mind of the novitiate and make it 
a factor in his whole future life. 

The actual ceremonies extend over several days 
and form a continuous succession of alternately 
ludicrous and serious performances, mollifying 
and terrifying incidents, friendly and painful 
treatments, from which the young heathen can 
scarcely escape being deeply and lastingly im- 
pressed with the seriousness of becoming a man. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 153 

The dance plays a conspicuous part of almost 
every phase of the ceremonies, the men frequently 
entering into them with such zeal as to produce a 
kind of ecstatic frenzy in which they fall down 
exhausted. 

Not only do the boys pass through the ordeal 
of circumcision and (in some cases) subincision, 
but in most tribes one or more teeth are knocked 
out (an upper or lower incisor, or a pair), either 
by loosening in the socket by mallet and chisel till 
it drops out, or by snapping it off in some adroit 
but painful way. Night and day, with almost no 
chance for the boys to rest, (sometimes for three 
days without being permitted to sleep, ) the cere- 
monies go on, all the time the Kaboo are instruct- 
ing their charges. 

The secret ceremonies over, a return to the 
camp is made; but the ordeal for the boys is not 
over. Dressed now in the full dress of the men of 
the tribe (quite scanty enough to satisfy a decol- 
lettant) their separation from their mothers and 
sisters is made quite complete and duly impressed 
by their being compelled, after they have been for 
a moment scrutinized by the old women who pre- 
tend not to recognize them, to leave the camp, and 
for some weeks, sometimes months, live by them- 
selves in the bush, securing such food as they can, 



154 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

carefully avoiding all communication with women, 
even their own mothers; must not even look 
at a woman. During this probation period in the 
bush the difficulty of rustling their own living is 
greatly increased by the restrictions on food per- 
missible for them to eat, as may be indicated by 
the following prohibited foods: Emu, any ani- 
mal which burrows in the ground (reminder of 
the footholes of the ceremonies) ; creatures hav- 
ing prominent teeth (kangaroo, e. g., reminder of 
tooth) ; any animal which climbs to the tree tops, 
any swimming bird (reminder of final washing 
ceremony) ; the spiny anteater, common opossum, 
lace lizard, snakes, eels, perch, etc. It will thus 
be seen that the probation period is virtually one 
of fasting, as these restrictions result in an arti- 
ficial scarcity of food, though the fasting is made 
harder by the plenty in the midst of which they 
are likely to be. 

When the youths have, according to certain 
tribal authorities, successfully passed their pro- 
bation period in the bush, (sometimes six months, 
with the Wiradjuri twelve months,) they are per- 
mitted to return to the camp, where they take 
their places in the men's quarters. But even then 
it is several years before they are permitted to 
claim their promised wives. 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 155 

In the Ngarigo Ceremonies during the time the 
novice is absent in the mountains (may be six 
months) he cannot touch cooked food with his 
hands. The old man who attends him must put 
it into his mouth. 

Among the Ya-itma-thang the young man is 
made Kurrong at about fourteen or sixteen years 
of age by knocking out two front teeth, and is 
then taken from mother and woman influence; 
at eighteen to twenty, when beard is properly de- 
veloped, he is made Wahu, or to the rank of a 
warrior. 

After speaking of the two general types of the 
initiation ceremonies, one being divided into two 
classes, being on critical examination much the 
same, Howitt expresses the belief that a man once 
initiated by either of the Kuringah the Burhung, 
or the Bora ceremonies would be accepted as an 
initiated man by either of the others if he could 
make himself known. On three occasions Howitt 
was so accepted among strange blacks after they 
were satisfied that he was one of the initiated.^ 

Among the Urabunna tribe, of the western 
part of Australia, the Karaxioeli-Wonkana or cir- 
cumcision ceremony (at nine or ten years of age) 



'Howitt, ibid., p. 593. 



156 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

is followed by a probation period in the bush for 
several months in which he is not permitted to be 
seen by the women. The next ceremony is the 
Wilyai'u, in which the young man is literally 
bathed in blood let from the veins in the arms of 
older men, followed by a scarification of his back 
and neck. Then for some months he is again 
compelled to exclude himself from the camp, in 
the bush. Later (every two years) the Wilyaru 
is followed by the Mindari ceremony. This with 
the additional ceremony of the Kulpi rite or sub- 
incision, completes the ceremonies, extended over 
some years, which initiate the young man into the 
full tribal life of the adult male. 

Among the Narrinyeri, the boys from ten years 
of age on are not permitted to cut or comb their 
hair until after the initiation ceremonies. When 
their beards have grown enough the youth is made 
a Narumhe or young man. Later they are seized 
and carried by the men from camp to the initia- 
tion grounds where their matted hair is combed, 
roughly torn out with the point of a spear, and 
their mustaches and beards are plucked out. 
Sleep is denied the newly made Kainganis for 
three days and they are also without food, while 
water is drunk only by sucking it through a reed. 
When they are permitted to sleep after three days 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 157 

they do so with their heads resting on two crossed 
sticks, and for six months their only clothing is a 
slight breech cloth. Three times are their beards 
permitted to grow about two inches and then 
pulled out before the Narumhe condition is 
passed, in which they are forbidden food belong- 
ing to women, and twenty different kinds of game 
are tabooed, only the animals most difficult of 
capture being allowed for food/ 

The initiation ceremonies of the Central 
Tribes are described by Spencer and Gillen in 
their "Native Tribes of Central Austraha." With 
these central tribes the ceremonies are more elabo- 
rate and spread over a longer period of years. 
The first usually occurs when the youth is from 
ten to twelve, the last and most impressive ones 
not being passed through till from the age of 
twenty-five to thirty. Among the Arunta and 
Ilpirra there are four : ( 1 ) Painting and throwing 
the boy up. (2) Circumcision or JLartna, (3) 
Subincision or Ariltha. (4) The Engwurra or 
fire ceremony. In the Central ceremonies the 
knocking out of the teeth is absent, though prac- 
ticed in other but minor ceremonies. 

The first ceremony, throwing up and painting, 
takes place when the youth is about ten or twelve 

'See Howitt, ibid., pp. 673, 674. 



158 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

years. After being tossed into the air by the men 
while the women dance, he is painted. He is told 
this is to make him grow, and that from now on 
he must not play with women and children, but 
live with the men, and go with them hunting 
game. He does and begins to look forward to 
the time when he shall be fully initiated into the 
mysteries and secrets of the tribe. 

Several years may pass before the next two 
ceremonies, circumcision or JLartna, and subin- 
cision or Ariliha, are had. Lartna may take place 
at any time after the boy has reached puberty. 
The ceremony of Lartna lasts over several days, 
and is prepared for by the accumulation of large 
food supplies, etc., as many corroborees are held 
during the ceremonies. 

The boy, unaware of the set proceedings, is 
suddenly seized and carried to the ceremonial 
grounds. A human hair girdle, known as Urliara, 
such as men wear, is wrapped around his waist. 
He is painted and told to implicitly obey instruc- 
tions during the ceremony and that under no 
circumstances must he tell either woman or boy 
anything of what he sees or hears. For a time 
during the ceremony he is isolated wath a few 
men for three days in the bush, on restricted diet 
and under enforced silence. This is to impress 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 159 

upon him the break in his life and the superiority 
of the older men. On the fourth day he is 
brought back for further ceremony performances. 
Singing and ceremonial maneuvers continue al- 
most constantly. On different days perform- 
ances representing different animals are held, cal- 
culated to instruct the boy in the tribal secrets 
and beliefs regarding totems and the sacred things 
connected therewith, and everything he sees and 
hears is surrounded with an air of mystery. Late 
in the evening of the ninth day the climax of the 
ceremony is reached, the operation, after elab- 
orate ceremonies had been taking place during 
the whole day. During the ceremonies a sacred 
instrument, the Churinga, akin to the bull roarer, 
plays an important part in the exercises. 

For some time after Lartna the youth is taken 
away by a charge and kept under certain restric- 
tions till the later ceremony, Ariltha or subinci- 
sion, some five or six weeks later (p. 251) , though 
it may be longer. This ceremony is considered of 
equal importance with Lartna, Women take part 
in the performances of the Lartna, but are com- 
pletely excluded in Ariltha (p. 252) . This latter 
ceremony is held at the camp of the youth who 
were in seclusion since the former operation. The 
operation of subincision or Ariltha is much se- 



160 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

verer than the former, and is accompanied by mys- 
terious performances accompanied by instructions 
into the tribal mysteries. After this public tas- 
sels are tied on the youths and they are told they 
are now admitted to the ranks of men and have 
no more operations to fear. While recovering 
from the wound certain food restrictions are rig- 
idly enforced, to be released only ceremoniously. 
He is ceremoniously conducted to the camp, and 
the ceremonies complete he is regarded as a mem- 
ber of the tribe initiated and capable of partici- 
pating in sacred ceremonies, but not considered a 
fully developed man till the Engwurra cere- 
monies have been passed. 

Initiation ceremonies of simpler sort are held 
for girls (breast rubbing with fat, throwing up, 
vagina opening, subincision) . 

The Engwurra, or Urumjnllaj is composed of a 
series of ceremonies having to do with totems, end- 
ing in fire ordeals. These end the initiation cere- 
monies, the initiate thereby becoming Urliara, or 
full member of the tribe. The object seems three- 
fold: (1) to teach obedience to the old men; (2) 
to teach hardihood and self -restraint ; (3) to teach 
the secrets of the tribe connected with the Cliw- 
inga and the connected totems. This ceremony 



ECSTATIC STATES IN RELIGIONS 161 

as witnessed by Spencer and Gillen lasted from 
the middle of September till the middle of Janu- 
ary, each day having from one to six ceremonies 
in the twenty- four hours. 

Diffusion of Initiation Ceremonies. It is in- 
teresting to note to what extent initiation cere- 
monies are practiced among primitive races. In 
Australia they can be said to be almost uni- 
versal among the native races. In Tasmania they 
are probable, while in Melanesia they have been 
observed among all the widely scattered tribes. 
In Polynesia they probably existed previous to 
the advent of permanent chieftainships and 
powerful rulers. In South Africa they seem to be 
common among the native tribes, while in South 
America and Central America they are common 
among the aborigines. In North America they 
have been observed in some form or other among 
the following tribes : Tuscaroras, North Carohna; 
Creeks, Georgia; Powhattans, Virginia; Cali- 
fornia Indians ; Dieguenos, Southern California ; 
Navajo, Sia, Zuna, and Hopi, New Mexico and 
Arizona; Kwakuitl, British Columbia; likely 
among the Delawares, and Iroquois; Seminoles, 
Florida; Muskoki, Florida; Cherokees; Ojibway; 
Menomini ; Algonquins and Bungees, Wisconsin ; 



162 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Sioux; Omahas; Winnebagos; Dakotas; Osage; 
Blackf eet ; Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Shoshoni, 
Wyoming; Kiowas; Pawnees, Wyoming; Utes, 
Utah; Mandans; Usage and Ponka, Kansas. 

How much more widely extended these cere- 
monies are it would be interesting to know, but 
is not essential here. 



Chapter 7 
Anger, 

Just how far anger should be encouraged to 
play a role as a formative factor in character de- 
velopment is a difficult question, the answer to 
which depends in a great measure upon the view- 
point from which anger is considered. Were we 
to confine our consideration to the momentary 
fits of sthenic outbursts where its manifestations 
and goal are confined to abnormal or intense 
physical reactions against trivial or petty annoy- 
ances, where one stamps, fumes, blusters, and 
storms till his anger has vented itself in these ac- 
tivities alone, the question is simplified and not 
difficult of disposition. But if by anger is meant 
the aroused fighting instinct against encroach- 
ments on rights or liberties; resentment against 



ANGER 163 

injustice or the infliction of wrongs, defiance to 
what challenges our moral or physical strength, 
or enmity to evil, then our question assumes 
larger proportions and its solution becomes of 
vaster significance. 

That anger has had biological purposiveness is 
scarcely to be gainsaid. Fear may pass over into 
anger and in the explosive outbursts of energy fol- 
lowing, success in defense may result. I have 
seen fear in a cat so transformed by motherhood 
into anger that she put to flight by a sudden at- 
tack a large dog from which she would ordinarily 
fly in a panic of fear. The sthenic activity of an- 
ger may as the culmination of an aggressive move- 
ment determine its success. Perhaps every 
hunter, though following game for sport, has ex- 
perienced the strange passing over of the pas- 
sion into something closely akin to anger 
which intensifies the desire to circumvent 
the quarry in its attempts to escape and which 
makes killing a delight though there may subse- 
quently be a reversion towards remorse or pity. 

Perhaps few men of achievement have in the 
last analysis been free from anger as one factor 
contributing to success in one form or another, — 
anger at the success of a rival or the goadings of 
an antagonist ; resentment at social and economic 



164 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

handicaps ; subdued fury at the refusal of his fel- 
lows to give him a chance or to recognize his tal- 
ents as he sees them. A grimly muttered, "I'll 
show them," hissed between set teeth and punc- 
tuated by swings of the clenched fist, probably 
has been the first stage in many a successful 
career. 

If anger has had biological purposiveness in 
animal life and primitive society and if the reca- 
pitulation theory holds true, then ontogenetically 
instinctive anger would early put in its appear- 
ance as a heritage from primitive ancestors. The 
bull ape, irritated beyond the danger point by a 
sequence of apish annoyances, suddenly flies into 
a towering fury, when his roar of defiance and 
rage is at once a signal for the females and young 
to flee to shelter, and a challenge to the other bulls 
to mortal combat ; and only when he has killed or 
been killed does the burst of fury subside. Irasci- 
bility is a common manifestation among savages. 
Not less suddenly than the bull a]3e does the 
Malay run amok when hopeless brooding, gloom, 
or pain bring on heartsickness as they term it. 
Once having given way to his fury the amoker 
runs on striking, stabbing, killing, till the rage 
has vented itself or he has been captured by exj)e- 
rienced catchers or is in turn killed. Savages, by 



ANGER 165 

dancing and yelling frequently work themselves 
into a towering rage as a preparation for battle or 
taking the warpath. Anger taking the form of re- 
venge plays an important role in savage life, and 
under its stimulus individuals and groups, nurs- 
ing their anger for days, weeks, months, and even 
years, will perform almost incredible feats of en- 
durance and fortitude in order to wreak venge- 
ance on the object of their wrath. 

Darwin claims to have observed instinctive an- 
ger in children on the eighth day. - Perez reports 
having seen it in the second month; while it is 
generally conceded that before the sixth month it 
is common. 

With children the expressions of anger take on 
the form of scratching, biting, striking, or kick- 
ing inanimate or animate things. Most adults 
may and do occasionally experience this instinc- 
tive explosive anger towards objects or persons. 
When we, exasperated beyond further endurance, 
lose control and act and speak with abandon, reck- 
less of consequence to foe or friend, is when the 
bull ape roars his infuriated challenge or the 
Malay runs amok. The outburst may follow a 
stimulus in itself insignificant when there has 
been a storing up or summation, — the last irrita- 



166 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

tion being but the train to the magazine which a 
spark sets off. 

But these outbursts may have a therapeutic 
value. A properly directed vent may be the 
safety valve to the boiler. Some forms of insanity 
are analyzed as stored up anger which has passed 
into channels from which discharge is not normal. 
What, therefore, to do with an angry child is of 
prime importance, but scarcely in our realm to 
discuss here further than to say that at times a 
child has a right to be angry, and forced repres- 
sion of righteous wrath may incline towards neu- 
rotic conditions. Anger properly directed, on the 
other hand, has great pedagogical value. Physi- 
cal well-being and equanimity of temper are so 
closely related on the whole that abnormal irrita- 
bility should be a warning to examine for under- 
lying physical or physiological causes. Diet, 
sleep, nourishment, exercise are all factors for 
consideration in control of anger ; for malnutri- 
tion, insufficient sleep, lack of proper exercise all 
increase susceptibility to irritability and weaken 
control. 

But the avoidance of anger is quite different 
from its control. To carefully avoid what would 
create anger would be a negative development af- 
ter all. Anger is at times legitimate. It is evil 



ANGER 167 

only when it is explosive and capricious, uncon- 
trollable. As a good it appears as a strong resent- 
ment against injustice and is an index of charac- 
ter. Such a force, under the control of education 
and directed along right lines, should be encour- 
aged rather than repressed. It is the development 
of the fighting spirit which always has played and 
always will play so important a role in life's game. 
If the fight instinct is repressed and eliminated 
we get the coward ; if overdeveloped, the bully ; if 
controlled and directed, the virile man. A great 
but plastic power, in children anger can be turned 
in almost any direction. .To bring anger under 
control of the intellect qualifies one to face try- 
ing situations without losing self-control. It is 
basal to agressiveness. A regiment of charging 
soldiers differs from a raging mob in just this in- 
tellectual control of anger. Society is the individ- 
ual writ large; and Heinze holds that nations as 
well as individuals must give way to blind fury, 
and he thinks a war where the people fight with 
enthusiasm is good for nations. To accept his 
theory makes easy of explanation why some big 
wars, awful in their carnage, have started over 
the most trivial of causes. The French Revolu- 
tion has been cited as the best example of the out- 
crop of rage. Pfister, in a recent pamphlet on 



168 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

War and Peace, holds war to be a reversion to 
first principles, — a trying out process, which lets 
out fear and tenses up a people. While it de- 
stroys many individuals and breaks down many 
of the survivors, yet it lets out a primal tendency 
of the evolutionary movement by which man has 
fought his way up. 

A war resulting from outcrop of anger pro- 
moted or engendered by selfishness or egotism 
makes the nation like the individual bully ; but an 
uprising against oppression, or in the defense of 
justice and liberty, or for an oppressed neighbor, 
tends toward national virility. 

Christianity contains a justification for out- 
burst of righteous wrath, vide Jesus in the 
temple; his arraignment of hypocrisy, etc. 

The crux of the matter is the sublimation of 
anger. Controlled, directed, intellectuahzed, not 
to say spiritualized, it becomes a motivation of 
achievement. Literature, modern and ancient, 
abounds in the descriptions of feats of heroes 
impelled by consuming rage to incredible accom- 
plishment. Sublimated, its energies are trans- 
ferred into higher regions. Culture and refine- 
ment are the agents for redirecting, and may even 
increase the occasions for wholesome indignation. 
Anger shifted from the egoistic to altruistic cir- 



ANGER 169 

cles becomes of community value, and once thus 
socialized it can play largely towards national bet- 
terment. And to arouse righteous public anger 
is the first work of the social reformer. The ex- 
treme of individualism causes us to remain com- 
placent and satisfied in the midst of suffering, 
misery, and rank injustice, so long as our own 
comfort and well-being are unaffected. But with 
the inculcation of broader, higher ethics, comes 
anger aroused by the perception that others are 
suffering injustice, wrong; and public abuse once 
tolerated becomes vigorously, even violently op- 
posed or resented. .To engender such anger or 
resentment is to establish a safeguard to society 
and national preservation, while for an individual 
to fight for a principle or a standard erected out- 
side of self is a potent enricher of character. 

To be thoroughly, furiously angry in others' 
interests has a wholesome effect on the one so an- 
gered. To know that one will resent vigorously 
an insult or an encroachment on principle or 
against a standard is to increase the respect others 
will have for that one. The growing complexity 
of society and its activities involves necessarily 
increased opportunity for conflict of ideas, inter- 
ests, and even activities, and causes for anger of 
the higher type are likely to ever continue to in- 



170 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

crease, and to select well the object of one's en- 
mity is not infrequently to determine one's life's 
activities. 

Anger as an expression of egoism may be 
turned to good account. Anger at the success of 
a rival, if turned into energetic activity to achieve 
a superior excellence, becomes a tremendous 
push-up in one's life. Resentment at lack of op- 
portunity for betterment, if not allowed to burn 
itself out in useless smoldering, may be just the 
impetus needed to overcome the handicaps pres- 
ent and achieve distinction despite the hindrances. 
Bitterness over social injustices, though responsi- 
bility therefor may not be focused, may let loose 
within one an amount of energy which will carry 
him into the front ranks of men who accomplish 
things for humanity. Resentment of individual 
injustices may fire the aspirations and determi- 
nations till the final result shall be achievement 
far beyond what might otherwise have been. 

Sublimated, legitimatized, rationalized, there- 
fore, anger becomes a factor in developing the 
higher powers of man. Deflected into wrong 
channels it may become a soul-consuming, de- 
structive fire, as nursed anger may grow into the 
form of hate which motivates deliberate murder 
or other crime. Toned-down-anger, on the other 



THE CULT OF DIONYSOS 171 

hand, may be the power that impels man to over- 
coming obstacles, the realization of ambitions, the 
acquirement of ideals, — may formulate a life's 
purpose, push one out into new fields of research, 
or drive on to great things. To be rightly mad 
may be to tap one's greatest reservoir of energy. 



Chapter 8 

The Cult of Dionysos. 

The religion of Greece as represented by the 
cult of Apollo had become conventional; Zeus, in 
his Olympian home, was nodding on his throne 
while around him the splendor of his court had 
become dimmed. Art, religion, ethics were los- 
ing their grip on the lives of men. Lethargy 
marked religious activity, and Greece was threat- 
ened by an impending decline, such as overtook 
India. 

But an unlooked-for event changed the whole 
of Greek life. A train of ecstatic women and 
reveling worshipers, following a beautiful mys- 
tery god, startled men from their inactivity in art, 
roused the sleeping Zeus, and burnished up the 
tarnished glory of Olympia. It was the coming of 
Dionysos, and in spite of the stress put by Greek 



172 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

philosophy upon the wide separation of gods and 
men, and in spite of the unemotional and sober 
older Greek religion, the new, wild, and entranc- 
ing religion of the Thracian god was adopted, 
molded into the Greek life, and he finally affiliated 
with the Olympian religion as the son of Zeus and 
Semele/ The following description of the rite of 
the Dionysian cult as given by Rohde, is quoted 
by Pratt: 

"The rite was performed on hilltops, in the 
darkness of night, by the uncertain light of 
torches. Music resounded, the crashing of brazen 
cymbals, the rolling thunder of a great drum, and 
the deep note of the flute 'enticing to madness,' 
whose soul was first awakened by the Phrygian 
Auletes. Excited by this wild music the band of 
worshipers danced with shrill cries. ... In a whirl- 
ing, raving, rushing circle the inspired throng 
danced over the hillside. ... So they raged till 
their emotions were aroused to the utmost pitch, 
and in sacred madness they precipitated them- 
selves upon the beast chosen for offering. . . . The 
participants in this sacred dance were thrown into 
a sort of madness, a tremendous overtension of 
the whole being ; a kind of rapture seized them in 
which they seemed to themselves and to others 



^Harrison, Religion of Ancient Greece, p. 54. 



THE CULT OF DIONYSOS 173 

'mad, possessed.' . . . This powerful intensifica- 
tion of feeling had a religious meaning, in that 
only through such overtension and expansion of 
his being did man feel able to come into touch and 
communion with beings of a higher order, with 
the god and his throng of spirits. . . . This 
'ekstasis' was considered a sacred madness, in 
which the soul having fled from the body be- 
came united with the god, in a condition of 'en- 
thusiasm.' Those seized v/ith this were called 
Evtheoi; they lived in the god, were in the 
god. While still in the finite ego they felt and 
enjoyed the fullness of an infinite life." — Psy- 
chology of Religion, pp. 61, 62. 

Tragic art is described by Nietzsche as the 
"Kunst der Schmerzenfreude/' and to explain 
why a young and happy nation like the Greeks 
should discover tragedy, why the need for it (for 
the art of a people is determined by a need) , he 
would find two psychical states on which the de- 
velopment of art may be said to depend, the Apol- 
lonian and the Dionysian, the pure and the direct 
states of art. The Apollonian (plastic or picto- 
rial) dreams of beauty while the Dionysian (mu- 
sical) revels in the ecstatic delight of existence. 
The devotees of the Apollonian are seers par ex- 
cellence, and live in dreams and the land of visions. 



174 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Set off from this explanatory art is the Dionysian, 
appeahng to the emotions rather than to the intel- 
lect, expresses rather than explains, is vague 
rather than lucid. It finds expression in music 
with or without the dance, though combined in 
the ancient choruses. It is the principle of ec- 
stasy. 

When from Thrace the Dionysian cult came 
with its wine, music, and ecstasy, it received a 
warm welcome and spread rapidly. Diony- 
sian spirit everywhere antagonized the Apol- 
lonic ideals, challenging the Apollonian religion, 
morality, art, philosophy, and even existence; 
flying in the face of accepted custom. Shaken 
from its lethargy ApoUonianism rose to the com- 
bat and in mighty effort endeavored to repel the 
invader. Apollo stood for law, Dionysos for 
liberty; Apollo for duty, the other for love; the 
one for custom, the other for change; Apollo for 
science, Dionysos for intuition; Apollo for art, 
Dionysos for inspiration: in a larger way Apollo 
stands for form, Dionysos for life; Apollo for 
matter, Dionysos for energy; Apollo for the hu- 
man, Dionysos for the superhuman; Apollo for 
the formed, the definite, the restrained, the ra- 
tional; Dionysos for the power that destroys the 
forms, leads the definite to the infinite, the unre- 



THE CULT OF DIONYSOS 175 

strained, the tumultuous, the passionate; Apollo 
pure form, Dionysos pure energy. 

But after somewhat prolonged conflict in which 
victory seemed to alternate, a mysterious union 
took place. At Delphi the priests of Dionysos, 
with their train of ceremony and festival, were 
admitted to the home of Apollo. This mysterious 
union resulted in the birth of Attic tragedy. The 
merger of the Apollonic dream-world with the 
Dionysian chorus is Greek tragedy. 

Archilochus, the lyric writer, was the first in 
which the two instincts were blended. The popu- 
lar song was introduced by him, in which the 
melody is important. Music symbolizes a realm 
which is beyond that of the visible. The Apol- 
lonic instinct in the lyric poet produces the vision- 
ary conception while the Dionysian gives it tran- 
scendentalism. The product then is the lyric text 
linked to music. Thus was the Greek tragedy 
evolved from the satyr choir. The satyr idealizes 
longing for return to free nature, and this fabled 
child of nature is in relation to the man of culture 
what Dionysianism is to civilization. And in be- 
holding the satyr choir the Greek was led to see 
the unity, the oneness in state and society leading 
back to nature. And every good tragedy func- 
tionizes by impressing this upon us, that life, 



17() HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

which underlies all, is ever indestructible, power- 
ful, joyous, in spite of its multifariousness. Im- 
pressed with this idea the Dionysians rejoiced, 
reveled, and in their ecstasy believed they had be- 
come satyrs. The tragic choir became an artful 
imitation of that phenomenon of nature. 

Tragedy was at first choir, not drama, though 
the god Dionysos was present only in imagina- 
tion; later being objectified, the task of the choir 
became to so stir the spectators dionysically as to 
make them see the god rather than his masked 
representative. 

Into Greek tragedy was introduced by the phi- 
losophy of commonplace things of Euripides and 
the Socratic doctrine of knowledge-is-virtue, the 
degenerating influences which finally proved its 
imdoing. 

Towards Socrates, whose theory that knowl- 
edge is virtue not only resulted in the overthrow 
of the grand old Hellenistic culture but whose in- 
fluence still holds sway, Nietzsche directed his 
scornful wrath as the destroyer of Greek tragedy, 
for which was substituted a dramatized epic. As 
a result of the Socratic philosophy of logic the old 
art was stifled, paradoxically or clearly expressed 
but cold thoughts displaced lofty apollonian 
conceptions, dionysian ecstasies were displaced by 



THE CULT OF DIONYSOS 177 

affected fiery passions of the actor, and the choir 
became secondary. The Socratic man of theories, 
thirsty for knowledge and perception and ready 
to die for them if need be, tended towards the 
utilitarian and the idea that the highest good lies 
in existence ; though science and knoAvledge when 
pushed far enough reach limitations where logic 
breaks down. There appears the tragic again. 
But this compensatory reentering of the tragic 
takes it out of the realm of the useful. 

As modern culture is optimistic, or Socratic, it 
does not favor the rebirth of tragedy. But the 
philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer setting 
anew the limits of human knowledge, according 
to Nietzsche, made possible the overthrow of the 
optimistic, superficial, Socratic culture and the 
ushering in of the tragic perception. This hope 
in Nietzsche was enhanced by the development of 
the Wagnerian tragedies promising a revival of 
the Dionysian art. Music is Dionysian art par 
excellence, plastic art Apollonic. The highest 
music is a symbol of the world's meaning. As 
tragedy was born of the struggle of the spirit of 
music for figurative and mythical expression, 
from lyric to attic, so from the depths of fable it 
may reissue to a regeneration of our tragedy, — 
the rebirth of tragedy. 



178 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

Cultured without myth the modern is educated 
abstractedly. Unrestrained by home myths the 
artistic imagination wanders aimlessly, — the re- 
sult of Socratism. As aesthetic phenomena alone, 
are the world and existence justified. The object 
of myth is to teach that even the apparently ugly 
and discordant is an artistic game of the Will in 
which in the eternal fullness of its joy it amuses 
itself. This characteristic of dionysian art, diffi- 
cult to understand, becomes comprehensible 
through the wonderful significance of musical 
dissonance. 

The German spirit has not forever lost its home 
myths. One day it will awake with morning 
freshness, kill the dragons, eradicate the malig- 
nant dwarfs, and even the spear of Woden cannot 
check its course. 



Chapter 9 

The Energy of Jesus. 

Whatever may be one's answer to the question. 
Who was Jesus ? there stands out in startling dis- 
tinctness a noteworthy fact, viz, in the three years 
of his ministry so intense was his activity that he 
impressed his personality upon the world to a de- 
gree achieved by no other person. What was the 



THE ENERGY OF JESUS 179 

secret of his success? By what power did he per- 
form a work so stupendous in so short a time? 
To those who believe him to have been the "Son of 
God," "divine incarnation," "the Word made 
flesh," with miraculous and divine powers at his 
command, enabled thereby to live extrancously, 
at least temporarily, to physical law, or possessed 
of such ever present divine knowledge that super- 
human laws and powers could be evoked at will to 
accomplish his purposes, the answer is easy and 
obvious. .To those who accept Jesus simply as a 
marij possessed perhaps of extraordinary powers, 
a great teacher of men, and to those who, ac- 
cepting Jesus as the Christ doing the will of God 
here on earth but having taken upon himself the 
habiliments of humanity for the full purpose of 
his mission, the question of how he passed beyond 
the usual borders of human limitations and forced 
his human powers to the accomplishment of such 
strenuous work is seen to contain in its answer 
factors including much of the human elements. 
And this holds out promise to his followers that 
the answer once found contains or may contain a 
key to unlock some of their own unused powers. 
And it is from this viewpoint that we approach 
this division of our subject, viz, that whether we 
look upon his career as a work commissioned of 



180 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

God or as the activities impelled by unusual mo- 
tivation or stimulation, in physical equipment he 
was human and to this extent subject to human 
limitations. How he made that human equip- 
ment produce its maximum of energy is therefore 
of interest and is quite germane to this treatise. 

It is quite well known to all students of the life 
of Jesus that scholars have taken their perspective 
from widely separated viewpoints. One extreme 
view looks upon Jesus as quite wholly divine, 
superhuman; the other as an eccentric, a lunatic, 
an epileptic. Between these views lie many 
others. That Jesus to some extent lived in a 
region of consciousness beyond the ordinary is the 
contention of Baumann,^ deduced from an exam- 
ination of the history of Jesus' life as we have it 
presented, particularly in Mark's gospel. 

As an initiation to his ministry Jesus demanded 
of John baptism. John seemed to recognize in 
Jesus the mightier one who was expected. Mirac- 
ulous signs at the baptism, according to the rec- 
ord, attested this fact and announced the great- 
ness of Jesus' mission. From the opened heavens 
descended a dove to rest upon the one whom the 
miraculous voice proclaimed to be the beloved 
Son of God. The incident of baptism itself 



^Die Gemutsart Jesu, Leipzig, 1908. 



THE ENERGY OF JESUS 181 

could not but have been felt by Jesus to be a 
momentous one for him, as it marked a sharp 
change in his life, — the termination of his term of 
preparation. A new era was opening before him, 
the period of manhood's work. It was his conse- 
cration, a supreme spiritual crisis, and the serious 
importance of the occasion to him could not but 
have been greatly enhanced by the incidents re- 
lated. 

It is therefore little wonder that, his being filled 
with the mighty sound of the divine voice, he felt 
impelled to seek seclusion where, tempted of the 
Devil, living with the animals, ministered to by 
angels, he spent forty foodless days and nights 
contemplating his mission and message. One can 
scarcely doubt that in the many hours of deep 
meditation in the forty days fast and vigil there 
were many moments in which Jesus entered the 
ecstatic state, when his vision enlarged to en- 
compass his future work. And from these ec- 
static moments sprung the nascent consciousness 
of his great powers. At least we are certain that 
John asserts that the beginning of Jesus' miracles 
was after he came out of the wilderness and at 
Cana at the marriage feast. (John 2 : 11.) And 
what is termed Jesus' temptation in the wilder- 
ness may have been the ecstatic mental excitement 



183 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

awakened by consciousness of his supernatural 
powers afterwards so startlingly shown in heal- 
ings and miracles. Knowledge of great power is 
in itself a great temptation. Without doubt the 
most serious of his threefold temptation was when 
there passed before his heightened and ecstatic 
mental sight the vision of a universal monarchy. 
Nothing but a keen sense of extraordinary powers 
could have given rise to such a temptation. With 
every Jew he held hopes of a restoration of Jew- 
ish national prestige ; but here arose a vision of an 
enlargement of the national dream. Can it be 
doubted that here in the wilderness, communing 
with nature, with mental powers alert and height- 
ened by his long fast, there sprang from these ec- 
static visions the germ which, lodged in his breast, 
became the motivating force underlying his sub- 
sequent activities and which grew till its unfold- 
ment gave to the world the great Christian idea of 
the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven, in 
which Jesus is looked upon as the prince poten- 
tate. Coming from his long sojourn in the wilder- 
ness he immediately raised the warning cry, *'The 
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at 
hand; repent ye!" And forthwith he began his 
remarkable career, impelled by the great domi- 
nating idea of the immanence of the kingdom. It 



THE ENERGY OF JESUS 183 

would be but natural if he should have been im- 
pressed with the idea that his power was given 
him to establish his everlasting kingdom against 
every resistance, and his subsequent rejection by 
the people was not due so much to his failure to 
proclaim himself a king as to his failure to use 
the weapons of force and compulsion so generally 
recognized as kingly concomitants. 

It can scarcely be doubted that he came from 
the wilderness changed. As we have seen, accord- 
ing to John he had previously done no miracles. 
That he moved in a region of consciousness be- 
yond the ordinary and that this was apparent to 
observers is rather strikingly shown by Mark's 
statement that after his return from the wilder- 
ness when he had healed some sick and cast out 
evil spirits his friends and the family sought him 
out and would lay hold of him, for he seemed "be- 
side himself" (Mark 3: 21), while his opponents 
charged him with effecting his cures by the power 
of Beelzebub with whom he was in league. 
(Mark 3: 22.) His heightened activity and con- 
scious display of power came as a surprise to his 
family ; and yet, according to the records of Mat- 
thew and Luke, his family had on several occa- 
sions had demonstration that even as a youth some 
great central idea was stirring his soul. A not- 



184 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

able instance was when his parents found him at 
the age of twelve years disputing with the doctors 
in the temple. Rebuked by his parents for caus- 
ing them alarm and anxiety by his absence, his 
unexpected retort was, "Know ye not that I must 
be about my Father's business?" (Luke 2: 48.) 
This, with other strange sayings, though she un- 
derstood them not, Mary "kept in her heart" 
(Luke 2:51), probably recalled later, when in 
the midst of his healings and wonder workings 
his followers told Jesus that his mother and broth- 
ers awaited without to see him, he replied by ask- 
ing, "Who is my mother and who are my broth- 
ers?" and added, "They who do my will." In his 
exalted state, to him earthly ties gave way before 
the fraternal bonds of the greater kingdom. 

It cannot but be acknowledged that great power 
rested in the act of Jesus calling his disciples. A 
call coming from one energizing only in the usual 
levels of consciousness could hardly have instantly 
called fishermen from their nets, laborers from 
their vocations to follow at the beck of the leader. 
Jesus' call to cast their lots with him and follow 
where he led was accompanied by a power quickly 
discerned by those to whom the call was made. 
The same power of authority was felt or observed 
by those who heard him teaching in the syna- 



THE ENERGY OF JESUS 185 

gogues, for they, astonished, said he taught not 
as the scribes but as one having authority and 
power. He exorcised unclean demons, cast out 
devils whom he would not permit to speak, for 
they knew him. His fame spreading rapidly, all 
manner of diseased persons came or were brought 
to him and were healed by his command. Not 
alone did the neurotic disorders yield to his com- 
mand, but even fever patients and lepers were 
cured at his word. 

Then, early in the morning he sought sohtude 
to pray; a custom he followed frequently. It 
was necessary to maintain his spiritual power. It 
is scarcely to be doubted that in these frequent 
soul communions with the Father he experienced 
the deepest ecstasy of this form of religious wor- 
ship, though two instances in the record stand out 
in marked prominence, viz, the Transfiguration, 
and in Gethsemane. On the Mount of Trans- 
figuration, where Jesus went for prayer, his exal- 
tation was so great that he appeared transfigured 
before them. The phenomenon confused his three 
disciples till Peter talked without knowing what 
he said. They did not understand their vision 
though it pointed to his fateful end. The three 
who were with Jesus on the Mount of Transfig- 
uration were also with Jesus later in the Garden 



186 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

of Gethsemane where Jesus had gone to pray just 
previous to betrayal, which Jesus expected. 
Here, according to the record, so exquisite was 
the ecstasy of his agonizing that the blood extrav- 
asated and dropped as sweat. It was his prep- 
aration for the final ordeal, and here as in other 
strenuous ordeals his preparation was in the ec- 
stasy of prayer. 

It was the possessed who first recognized the 
Messiah, not with joy, but with grave apprehen- 
sion, calling out for him to leave them alone. This 
recognition by the demons afforded foundation 
for the charge by Jesus' opponents that he per- 
formed his cures by the power of Beelzebub, with 
whom he must be in league. But Jesus rebuked 
them by saying that the power of Satan would 
not be used to defeat Satanic purposes, and that 
the accusation that demons were dispossessed at 
his command because in league with Satan was a 
slander against the Holy Ghost of eternally un- 
forgivable proportions, thus emphatically expres- 
sing his conviction that he as a prince of the King- 
dom of Light was marshaling his forces against 
those of the Kingdom of Darkness. 

Jesus, as before mentioned, frequently with- 
drew for prayer ; but it is not at all unlikely that 
these periods of withdrawal served a double pur- 



THE ENERGY OF JESUS 187 

pose; they afforded opportunity for physical re- 
cuperation as well as spiritual meditation. These 
observed periods of rest suggest either that he 
may have been easily fatigable or that he ener- 
gized so closely to his maximum that his reserve 
of physical energy was kept low. His unex- 
pectedly quick death on the cross indicates his 
easy exhaustibihty or the smallness of reserve 
force. The strenuosity of his activity would indi- 
cate the latter. 

Jesus attracted attention and acquired fame by 
his many healings ; but the indifference with which 
he broke the Sabbath to do good attracted still 
greater attention to him, and great concourses of 
people surrounded him, and he did miracles in 
healing many of their sick. 

He chose his twelve disciples; and the exalted 
condition of his mind is indicated by the instruc- 
tions he issued to them as he sent them out to 
preach the gospel of the kingdom. Not only were 
they to preach, but w^ere to heal and exercise 
power over unclean spirits. Of the morrow they 
were to take no thought ; were not even to take a 
second coat, or purse, but go and preach, casting 
aside the cares of this world which had no place in 
his kingdom. 

Asleep on the ship with his disciples when the 



188 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

windstorm arose and was about to overwhelm the 
boat, they awakened him and he rebuked them for 
their lack of faith and then rebuked the storm into 
silence. His followers were awed at this manifes- 
tation of power over the forces of nature. 

As they came to the shore a lunatic who had 
been dwelling in the tombs rushed to Jesus, ac- 
knowledging him as the Son of God. The legion 
of demons possessing the body of the lunatic, at 
Jesus' command left the man and entered the 
near-by herd of swine, which rushed into the sea 
and were drowned. Commotion followed and 
Jesus and his followers left. 

On the way to the bedside of Jairus's little 
daughter a woman was healed of bloody issue by 
touching his garment. He perceived that force 
passed from him to the one touching his garment. 
If all his cures were thus accompanied by an 
emanation of force from his being, his many pe- 
riods of recuperation are understood. 

When they reached Jarius's house the girl was 
apparently dead. The unbelieving ones banished 
from the room, his three favorite followers with 
him, Jesus, taking her by the hand, raised her 
from the dead and then cautioned secrecy. 

His journeying took him to his native city; but 
there he found little faith and healed few. After 



THE ENERGY OF JESUS 189 

the death of John, Jesus performed the first 
miracle of feeding the five thousand. Then Jesus 
sent his disciples away in the boat and went into 
a mountain to pray. In the morning the disciples 
on the boat in distress were astonished by seeing 
Jesus come, walking on the water. Then fol- 
lowed more healings, till his fame as a healer and 
miracle worker became very great. 

Over near Tyre Jesus healed the neurotic 
daughter of the Syrophoenician woman, though at 
first he would keep his ministrations for the chil- 
dren of the kingdom, then yielded to the mother's 
arguments and healed the child at a distance, re- 
quiring an augmentation of faith. Leaving Tyre 
and Sidon he went to Decapolis, where the deaf 
mute was healed. For three days the multitude 
followed Jesus without food, and some four thou- 
sand were fed on a few loaves and fishes. Com- 
ing into another part of the country he healed the 
blind man of Bethsaida. Starting into the towns 
of Csesarea Philippi, as they journeyed Jesus 
propounded the question, "Whom do men say 
that I am?" When he had been told what various 
ones had said, he asked, "But whom say ye that I 
am?" Peter then confessed him to be the Messiah, 
and Jesus charged them to tell no man. 

The setting of Mark's story had been towards 



190 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

this denouement, and Jesus seemed to accept 
the occasion as ripe for the presentation of his 
definition of his messiahship as prophetically por- 
trayed in Isaiah and Daniel, and he spoke plainly 
of his probable rejection, suffering, death, and 
resurrection. Peter's rebuke and presentation of 
the popular idea is treated by Jesus as a Satanic 
temptation. 

But his knowledge of the suffering through 
which he would have to pass seemed not to de- 
press him; but, resigned to God's will, and with 
the belief that his death would open the way to 
glory, he journeyed on to Jerusalem and his fate. 
Along with his soul suffering went great hope. 

It was shortly after this that with the trio he 
went up into the Mount of Transfiguration, com- 
ing down from which after healing the epileptic 
boy he went incognito into Galilee, and on the 
way taught of his messiahship ; but the disciples, 
taking it literally, fell to contending about posi- 
tions of honor in the coming kingdom. 

In the instructions of Jesus to the rich youth 
who had kept all the commandments, Jesus dem- 
onstrated his great sense of human suffering and 
his idea that wealth is a trust. From this view 
to relieve the sufferings of poverty was a duty and 
piety as well as a virtue. In the kingdom of 



THE ENERGY OF JESUS 191 

heaven all were to become as little children and 
earthly possessions were of trivial account when 
compared with the greater spiritual things. In 
this spirit the disciples renounced their callings, 
doubtless to an extent at least also actuated by 
the belief that the nearness of the establishment of 
the kingdom made earthty possessions of little 
consequence. 

Jerusalem was the goal of his journey. Two 
of the disciples were sent for the foal of an ass, 
the beast on which Jewish royalty had been wont 
to ride. His entry into and proclamation to Je- 
rusalem thus seated was to be in accord with pop- 
ular Jewish belief. He entered, saw the splen- 
dor of the temple, and retired. 

The incident of cursing the fig tree occurred the 
next day, held to be symbolic. Indeed, by some 
it is held and perhaps not without reason, that 
all the miracles performed by Jesus were sym- 
bolic. The turning of wine into water at the 
marriage in Cana, the great draft of fishes, the 
raising of the daughter of Jairus, and Lazarus, 
the stilling of the tempest, the feeding of the mul- 
titude, walking over the sea, the coin in the fish's 
mouth, cleansing of the lepers, withering of the 
fig tree, etc., all have symbolic significance. In 
the triple temptation in the wilderness during 



193 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

the forty days fast Jesus refused to exercise his 
powers for selfish ends or for purely temporary 
purposes; and it might well be held that to the 
heightened, exalted, spiritual vision of Jesus 
there was in each of his miraculous accomplish- 
ments meanings far deeper and broader than the 
ostensible ones. 

The lofty spirit of enthusiasm which character- 
ized Jesus and which continued among the Chris- 
tians afterwards, is perhaps nowhere seen to 
better advantage than during the closing scenes 
of his life. That there was great nerve tension 
cannot be doubted. From Old Testament proph- 
ecies and the signs of the times Jesus knew his 
fatal hour drew near, a time when all his strength 
of soul would be tried to the extreme, when the 
faith of his followers would be put to severe test. 
Throughout the paschal meal with the prediction 
of betrayal, through Gethsemane, the trial, the 
march to Calvary, Jesus bore himself in a manner 
to indicate that dread arising from knowledge of 
the immanence of suffering, and his propitiatory 
death was held in abeyance by his superb belief 
in the exaltation which would come as a result 
of his suffering. Keenly agonized at the pros- 
pective ordeal, fearing the weakness of the flesh, 
he begged for the cup to pass if possible ; yet im- 



THE ENERGY OF JESUS 193 

pressed with the importance of his sacrifice he 
resignedly exclaimed, "Thy will, not mine be 
done." 

He was physically weakened. Unable to bear 
his cross he fell and had to be helped. On the 
cross itself he expired sooner than is usually the 
case. 

From the foregoing brief review of Jesus' life 
history it is quite clear that he lived and energized 
in a level of consciousness above the ordinary. 
In all his ministry there stood out the great cen- 
tral idea of his messiahship. In his youthful mind 
was firmly fixed the belief that he had a special 
mission, for at the age of twelve we find him con- 
cerned about doing the business of his Father. 
At his baptism the visible appearance of the Spirit 
of God in the form of a dove and the audible 
acknowledgment of his divine parentage vivified 
and enlarged his previous impressions, while his 
whole life's purpose and work as he believed them 
to be were given direction and great subjective 
intensification by his fast in the wilderness, with 
its ecstasies of prayer and meditation. On issuing 
from the wilderness he at once raised the warn- 
ing cry of the kingdom of God at hand, and began 
a labor which in intensity of activity is unparal- 
leled. His continuous labor of teaching, preach- 



194 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

ing, healing, and doing wonderful things was 
interrupted only by his short periods of retire- 
ment, when he would seek seclusion for prayer, 
meditation, and recuperation. 

It can hardly cause wonderment that at the 
terminating crisis of his life the strenuosity 
thereof should have exhausted his physical 
powers, for his energies had been consumed by 
his wonderful energizing. Dominated, actuated, 
impelled constantly onward by the great idea of 
his messiahship and the importance of his mission 
to others, ecstatically conscious of his great 
powers, burdened always with keen sympathy for 
the suffering of others and his great desire to help 
mankind, he worked and labored in a way which 
has given us an unsurpassed example of what 
tremendous possibilities of spiritual activities lie 
within the reach of those who will to do; and of 
how greatly a great dominating idea can func- 
tionize as a key to unlock the hidden reservoirs 
of power and energy, and how hope can exalt 
above suffering when that suffering is for a lofty 
purpose, — a dominant characteristic of real 
Christians in all ages. 



Chapter 10 
Fatigue. 

A lengthy treatise of the phenomenon of fa- 
tigue would be quite out of place here. It is, how- 
ever, closely related to the phenomenon of second 
breath, and hence comes in for some attention in 
this paper. 

It is almost axiomatic that the organs of the 
body cannot all run at top speed at once. It is a 
question of blood supply, and one of amount as 
well as quality of blood. By successive contrac- 
tion a muscle is shortened, and if the regular con- 
tractions are continued long enough a point will 
be reached when further stimulation fails to elicit 
further contraction. When such muscle is fa- 
tigued by voluntary effort, according to Pyle' 
there are nerve cells in brain and cord involved, 
as well as muscle fibre, and where the fatigue is 
pushed to where voluntary effort is futile to lift 
weight, artificial stimulation will cause the muscle 
to contract, indicating that the nerve cells give 
out first. Doctor W. A. White, however, states 
that the nerves and central nervous organs are 
not susceptible of fatigue.^ Fatigue is probably 

Kyle's Personal Hygiene. 

^Article in American Journal of Medical Science, CXLV 
(1913), p. 219. 

195 



196 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

due to at least three causes : ( 1 ) The using up of 
the contractile material or the substances fur- 
nishing the available supply of potential energy. 
Restitution of matter and energy falls behind 
waste. It is a draw on capital. ( 2 ) The accumu- 
lation of the waste products of activity, of which 
lactic (cacro-lactic) acid is an important one, and 
the transference of such waste products to the 
injury of the activities of other organs. (3) The 
lack of oxygen. 

Repose is the complement of fatigue, and in 
rest all the waste materials are removed; new 
supplies of energy-producing materials are 
stored up. 

The literature on fatigue is quite extensive ; but 
one of the best contributions bearing on our as- 
pect of the subject has come from the pen of 
Doctor Cannon,' in which he presents a summary 
of recent investigations carried on in the Harvard 
physiological laboratories on the effects of emo- 
tions on the secretions of the internal organs. 
We herein present some of the facts set out in his 
interesting and valuable contribution. 

Scientific knowledge of the emotional states 
is meager, though many of the superficial mani- 
festations of emotions have been noted, such as 



'Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage. 



FATIGUE 197 

pallor, "cold sweat," dry mouth, expanded pupils, 
rising of the hair, rapid heartbeat, twitching of 
the muscles, which might arise from fear, horror, 
deep disgust. But of the effect of the emotions 
on the deeper lying organs of the body little is 
known, and the changes, if they are to be meas- 
ured and noted, must be observed by peculiar or 
special methods. 

Digestion depends upon a psychic factor to 
start it, — pleasure, — ^aroused by the sight and 
smell of food, its taste, etc., the pleasure starting 
the flow of the gastric fluids. .The secretion of 
those gastric juices is checked almost instantly by 
pain and great emotional excitement. Pawlow 
with his laboratory dogs and sham feeding has 
shown that the presence of food in the stomach is 
not essential for the flow of the gastric juices. 
They flow only when appetite is present and the 
food material presented is agreeable. The mere 
smell or sight of food would start the flow. This 
seemed to justify the conclusion that the stomach 
juices are psychic secretions. This initial psychic 
flow of the gastric secretions is important be- 
cause (1) its continuance depends upon the ac- 
tion of its acid or its digestive products on the 
pyloric end of the stomach, and the secretions 
of the pancreatic juice and bile are called out by 



198 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

the action of this same acid on the mucous mem- 
brane of the duodenum. The satisfaction of the 
palate therefore determines the proper starting 
of digestion. 

The feeHngs which are unfavorable to diges- 
tion, and which are stronger than those which 
promote it, are vexation, worry, anxiety, or great 
emotions, such as anger, fear, horror, or even over- 
powering joy. The movements of not only the 
stomach but of the entire alimentary tract may 
be stopped during great excitement, and peri- 
stalsis may be entirely checked by even mild emo- 
tional disturbances. Mental discord may thus 
bring about conditions of gastric inertia. The 
majority of gastric indigestion cases are func- 
tional and of nervous origin. 

The bodily changes due to emotional causes 
are stimulated through the autonomic nervous 
system, separated into three divisions, the cra- 
nial, the thoracico-lumbar (or sympathetic), and 
the sacral. The line of demarcation between the 
three divisions is not complete, as the neurones 
of the mid-division are found reaching organs 
also supplied with neurones from the end divi- 
sions ; and it has been observed that when the neu- 
rones of the end divisions meet in any organ those 
of the mid-division the influences exerted are an- 



FATIGUE 199 

tagonistic, and the antagonistic divisions, it seems 
evident, may be reciprocally innervated by ar- 
rangements in the central nervous system. The 
cranial autonomic, for example, concerns itself 
with building up reserves for stress periods, its 
functions being accompanied b}^ the mild pleas- 
ures of sight, taste, and smell of food, which are 
instantly banished by emotions stimulating the 
mid-division or sympathetic. But the natural 
antagonism between the two processes of saving 
and expenditure, preparation and use, is biologi- 
cally purposive, as can be shown. The same kind 
of antagonism exists between the mid-division 
and the sacral, with the same concomitant antip- 
athy between the resultant emotional states. 

It is a well-established fact that artificial stim- 
ulation of the nerves to the adrenal glands will 
bring about secretory activity and that as a re- 
sult adrenin in the blood will be increased. And 
this makes the assertion safe that mechanism ex- 
ists in the body by means of which quick action 
of these glands is secured in putting adrenin into 
the circulation. 

For many years it has been recognized that 
adrenin injected into the blood produces remark- 
able results, e. g., the liberation of sugar from the 
liver, relaxation of the smooth muscle of the 



200 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

bronchioles, acts as an antidote for muscular 
fatigue, alteration of blood distribution, forcing 
it from abdominal viscera into heart, lungs, limbs, 
and central nervous system. Hence knowledge 
of the effects of emotional stimulation of this 
gland becomes of great importance. And from 
carefully observed experiments it is quite certain 
that stimulation of the splanchnic nerves results 
in an increase of adrenin secretion and conse- 
quently of the amount in circulation of the blood ; 
and it is equally certain that impulses from the 
sympathetic system dominate the viscera, and 
that the adrenals are by strong emotions stimu- 
lated into activity by such nerve impulses as 
themselves produce profound changes in the vis- 
cera. The adrenin thus given oif augments the 
nervous influences which induced the changes. 
Among other effects of adrenin upon the body, 
other than inhibiting alimentary activites, an im- 
portant one is the constriction of the blood vessels 
in portions of the body, with a resultant rise in 
arterial blood pressure. Another effect is the 
liberation of sugar. Injection of adrenin may 
liberate sugar to such an extent that glycosuria 
follows. Carbohydrate material is transported in 
organisms in the form of sugar, while the storage 
form is glycogen or animal starch. The normal 



FATIGUE 201 

amount of sugar in the blood is 0.06 to 0.1 per 
cent, and any amount above that passes the sugar 
barriers in the kidneys ; and that emotional stim- 
ulation may result in the liberation of sugar is 
attested by the fact that cats strongly excited de- 
velop glycosuria while Smillie found that four of 
nine students after difficult examinations had gly- 
cosuria though normally without it. Only one 
out of nine had glycosuria after an easy examina- 
tion. Fiske and Cannon examined twenty-five 
football men after a hard and exciting game and 
found glycosuria in twelve cases, though five of 
the positive cases v>xre substitutes not entering 
the game. The only excited "fan" examined 
showed glycosuria. 

Without doubt the adrenals play an important 
contributory role in glycosuria from splanchnic 
stimulation. Sugar is the optimum source of 
muscular energy, and its liberation at times of 
great muscular exertion is a biologically signifi- 
cant provision of nature. Removal of adrenals 
debilitates muscular power, while injection of ex- 
tracts of the glands invigorates. 

By experimentation it was learned that im- 
provement in the contraction of a fatigued muscle 
followed splanchnic stimulation. Splanchnic 
stimulation has two general effects, viz, increase 



302 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

of arterial blood pressure and to cause the ad- 
renal gland to discharge adrenin. In excitement 
as well as in strong exertion the blood from the 
large vessels of the abdomen is forced to other 
parts of the body. Increased blood j^ressure has 
been found to be directly effective in restoring 
the normal irritability to fatigued structures. 
Fatigue products or metabolites accumulate in 
a muscle doing work and interfere with contrac- 
tion. A rise of blood pressure seems efficacious 
in removing such products. 

Sympathetic discharges, aided by simultaneous 
adrenal secretions aroused by pain and excite- 
ment, force the blood from the vegetative organs 
of the interior to the exterior skeletal muscles, ex- 
cept that it is well known that the arteries of the 
heart are dilated rather than contracted by 
adrenin, while the vessels of the brain and lungs 
are only slightly if at all affected by adrenin. 
Thus excitement results in lungs, brain, and heart 
being abundantly supplied with blood taken from 
organs of less use in critical occasions, as the 
blood supply of the heart, lungs, and brain de- 
pends upon the height of general arterial blood 
pressure. Some of the factors entering into the 
shortened contractions of fatigued muscle are: 
(1) decreased supply of energy producing ma- 



FATIGUE 303 

terial ; ( 2 ) metabolites accumulate in muscle ; ( 3 ) 
nerve polarization at point of electrical stimula- 
tion ; and ( 4 ) lessened irritability. The threshold 
stimulus is heightened by fatigue and becomes a 
measure of its irritability, and observations show 
that the normal threshold may be raised by fatigue 
from one hundred to two hundred per cent on an 
average, and in some cases six hundred per cent or 
more, varying with time and the animals experi- 
mented on. Rest restores the normality in from 
fifteen minutes to two hours, the variation being 
due to time given for rest, the duration of the 
work, and the condition of the animal. Further- 
more, it was observed that injection of adrenin 
(0.1 to 0.5 cubic centimeters 1: 100,000) de- 
creased the fatigue threshold within five minutes 
to a 75 per cent recovery in nerve muscle and 46 
per cent in muscle. And it was found, interest- 
ingly enough, that adrenin injection had no effect 
on the threshold of the nerve muscle and muscle 
in the nonfatigued animals. Thus adrenin func- 
tionizes in effecting a rapid recovery of normal 
irritability, and this by specific action and not 
wholly due to the effect of adrenin in general cir- 
culation. So adrenin acts as a restorer of muscle 
irritability, and will in five minutes accomplish 
what rest will only do in one hour or more. And 



204 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

adrenal secretions stimulated by emotional ex- 
citement has like result. 

Intravenous injection of even minute amounts 
of adrenin hastens the clotting of blood, and the 
increased secretion of adrenals due to excitement, 
pain, etc., (emotion) has some effect. 

Thus adrenin discharged into the blood as a 
result of emotional excitement accomplishes the 
following results: It seems to be an essential in 
calling out carbohydrates stored in the liver, thus 
supplying the blood abundantly with sugar; it 
assists in taking blood from abdominal organs 
and sending it to heart, lungs, central nervous 
system, and limbs ; it quickly and greatly reduces 
the effects of fatigue ; it hastens coagulation. 

The bodily reactions in pain and emotions are 
reflex, thus not will-controlled. The motor pat- 
tern is therefore deepty inwrought. But these 
automatic responses to emotion are, we are safe 
in assuming, useful ones. In what does their util- 
ity consist? The promptness of the results is 
noteworthy. Adrenal secretion resulting from 
splanchnic stimulation is a matter of seconds, 
while sugar liberation in the blood as a result is 
a matter of only a few minutes. Experimental 
results show that muscle work is preferably ac- 
complished by utilization of sugar energy, and 



FATIGUE 205 

that increase of blood sugar augments the abihty 
of muscles to continue work. Hence increase of 
blood sugar due to major emotion and pain is of 
benefit to the organism in meeting emergency de- 
mands for great power output. 

Adrenin freely liberated in the blood aids not 
only in calling out stored sugar supplies, but 
quickly restores fatigued muscles to original ir- 
ritability. 

The adrenals are not capable of prolonged ac- 
tion, being soon fatigued, but blood-sugar in- 
crease due to splanchnic stimulation may long 
outlast the stimulation period. 

The smooth muscles of the bronchioles are nor- 
mally held in a state of tonic contraction. This 
tonic contraction, increased from any cause, pro- 
duces difficulty of breathing. Increased demand 
for air to the lungs, as in great physical exertion, 
may temporarily cause the normal contraction of 
the smooth muscles of the bronchioles to keep the 
bronchial orifices too small for the increased sup- 
ply of air needed. Gasping for breath results, as 
in a winded runner. It is a partial asphyxia. But 
experimental results show that asphyxia stimu- 
lates increased adrenal secretions, and adrenin is 
known to have a relaxative effect upon the smooth 
muscles of the bronchioles, resulting in freer ac- 



206 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

cess of air to the lungs. Hence in cases of vigor- 
ous exertions asphyxia may augment emotions in 
stimulating adrenal secretion with consequent in- 
crease of sugar output. 

Thus the phenomenon of second wind may be 
explained on this chemical basis, — viz, the release 
of sugar and adrenin with consequent increase of 
blood flow, supplying energy and lessening fa- 
tigue, while the action on the bronchioles permits 
larger oxygen supply to the lungs. Physical 
"second wind" may therefore be looked upon as 
closely allied to the bodily changes due to excite- 
ment, etc. ; and all these bodily changes, with ac- 
companying qualification of the organism for 
greatly increased temporary output of power, are 
highly purposive from a biological viewpoint. 

It has long been recognized that the major 
emotions have an energizing effect, and this has 
led some psychologists to speak of reservoirs of 
power which are tapped occasionally and by some 
few. And it is quite likely that there is an aug- 
mentation of nervous activity resulting in in- 
creased power which cannot altogether be 
accounted for as being due to the effects of the 
invigorating influence of the secretions above re- 
ferred to. Strong emotions have dynamogenic 
value, as is indicated by the fact that on occasions 



FATIGUE 207 

when the neuro-muscular system is likely to be 
put under unusual strain emotional excitement 
is not an unusual concomitant. This is demon- 
strated in competitive feats of strength or endur- 
ance in sports, prolonged religious dances, etc. 
And it is noteworthy that it is where there are 
excesses of emotional turbulence that remarkable 
endurance and prolonged exertion are seen to a 
degree to challenge astonishment. The presence 
of witnesses and music may be a contributing in- 
fluence to the arousal of the emotional stress nec- 
essarily accompanying the efforts. And these 
emotional states frequently are accompanied by 
a feeling of power. 

It will be seen from the foregoing that fatigue 
bears a close relation to physical erethism or 
"second breath"; and while it may not fully ex- 
plain the calling into play of unusual reserves of 
power nor the tapping of reservoirs of energy ap- 
parently available at time of great emotional 
stress, yet it goes far in pointing out where the 
probable limits of these reserves lie. It may be 
quite probable that there are nervous reservoirs 
of energy called into play in these stress periods 
which augment those furnished by the secretions 
of the adrenals ; yet further investigations may re- 
veal that others of the internal organs of a class 



208 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

with the suprarenals f unctionize in a way not now 
known to augment the wonderful results of ad- 
renal stimulation, and such investigations may 
further clarify the mystery which surrounds the 
•presumptive existence of the reservoirs of energy 
so little used by the average individual. 

The phenomenon of mental erethism or "second 
breath" has received perhaps too little investiga- 
tion. The difficulty of this problem has been so 
succinctly set out by F. M. Urban in his discus- 
sion of Professor Dodge's discussion" of mental 
work that it appears well to quote Mr. Urban's 
words: 

"Any information as to energy transforma- 
tions which take place as concomitants of mental 
processes certainly would be an extremely valu- 
able addition to our knowledge; but no such in- 
formation is at present available nor is it likely 
to be forthcoming soon, for calorimetric experi- 
mentation in psychology will be at least as 
difficult as plethysmographic or sphymographic 
analysis. One may venture to believe that the 
difficulties will be even greater, because to the dif- 
ficulties of isolating the mental processes will be 
added the difficulties of apportioning the proper 



^American Journal Psychology, April, 1913, p. 271. 
^Psychological Review, vol. 20, p. 1, 



FATIGUE 309 

amounts of energy to the different physiological 
processes going on at the same time. That this 
is not an imaginary but a real difficulty is proved 
by the recent discussions between Lehmann, Ex- 
ner, and Hellpach, on the notion of metabolism 
(as measured by the amount of carbonic acid 
secreted) during mental work. Dodge's hope 
that thermo-dynamic analysis may one day help 
us toward a better understanding of processes 
not accessible to introspection refers to an ideal 
state of knowledge, and has nothing to do with 
the present state of affairs. Similar hopes were 
expressed in regard to plethysmographic ex- 
periments ; but the prophets have been singularly 
reticent of late. 

"Let us suppose, however, that all the experi- 
mental difficulties have been overcome success- 
fully, and that we know the energy transforma- 
tions corresponding to every mental process. 
Does that really give us a measure of mental 
work? The principle of the conservation of en- 
ergy compels us to refer these energy transforma- 
tions to the concomitant physiological processes, 
in which energy can neither be gained nor lost. 
The entire amount of energy, as determined by 
calorimetric measurement, is consumed by them; 
and no energy remains to be referred to the corre- 



310 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

sponding psychical processes. We have a com- 
plete understanding of the energy transforma- 
tions which are involved in the physiological 
processes; but we are as far from the dynamic 
psychology as ever, for we cannot equate mental 
work with physical energy although we can cor- 
relate them. From this it follows that psycho- 
dynamics as defined by Dodge has the same limita- 
tions as the doctrine of some thirty years ago that 
psychology must express mental events in terms 
of brain-physiology." 



Chapter 11 

Summary and Conclusion, 

While second wind acquirement is not rare, the 
persons pushing themselves beyond the first layer 
of fatigue are few in number compared to those 
who stop energizing before they reach it. Few 
individuals crowd the limits of possible energiz- 
ing. Under usual conditions and within certain 
limits the processes of waste in the physical organ- 
ism due to activity is equaled by the processes of 
repair. To find the limit where the balance is 
maintained, thus permitting the maximum of en- 
ergy development without permanent impair- 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 311 

ment of the physical machinery, and to find just 
how varying types of individuals can be stim- 
ulated to this maximum is a twofold problem 
of prime importance to every line of human 
endeavor. 

Habit has much to do with the persistency v>^ith 
which the average individual remains inferior to 
his full self. And those who escape from this 
inferiority owe their escape to excitement, ideas, 
and habitual efforts which push them over the 
first barriers of fatigue onto levels of conscious- 
ness of wider significance. Examples are nu- 
merous. In the absence of normal excitement 
deleterious excitement may functionize to throw 
the higher powers into gear; but this means the 
borderland of constitutional abnormality. Far 
better is it to have the will functionize to open uj) 
the deeper levels. Asceticism, religious devotion, 
love, ambition, ideas, may all become the dynamo- 
genie agents in arousing the reserves of energy. 
Conversions stimulating to higher activity are 
usually but the arousing of a dormant idea. 
Prayer msLj be an energizer to higher activity. 

What, then, is the possible expansion of our 
power, and what is the method to bring out this 
maximum expansion are questions presenting 
our great problem of national and individual edu- 



213 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

cation — to chart human limits, determine human 
types, and learn the use of energy reserves. 

Our culture ideal passing through the stages of 
"excelsior" and strenuosity, has reached the third 
one of efficiency. This adds economy and sim- 
plicity to the high aim of the first and the inten- 
sity of the second. Efficiency in the industrial 
world is being enhanced by reducing waste in lost 
motion by the laborers, thereby reducing fatigue 
and increasing output, by determining the proper 
size, shape, style, and weight of tools; by elimi- 
nating faulty methods of accounting responsible 
for many failures each year; by standardization 
of everything, from component parts of machines 
to forms of business organizations and corpora- 
tion and city charters. In agriculture, efficiency 
is promoted by a large govermnent literature 
dealing with crop increase, improvement of ani- 
mals, and betterment of rural social conditions. 
Schools, colleges, and churches are put hard up 
against the questions of efficiency; and of every 
institution, more particularly the quasi-public and 
public, is demanded a dutiful discharge of public 
service responsibilities and the erection of higher 
standards. What, then, of our attainments, abili- 
ties, and powers ? They must be enhanced by the 
love of work, making of severe toil play. Physical 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 313 

as well as intellectual workmen must by knowl- 
edge of hygiene keep themselves at the top notch 
of condition, and learn that sin, being dissipa- 
tion, weakens accomplishment, while chastity, 
honesty, temperance, are dynamic as well as re- 
ligious assets. The powers and heritage of one's 
ancestors slumber within him. To awaken them 
to useful work is his problem. And with the loud 
call to each person to energize to his maximum 
there sounds out with it in harmonious accord the 
bugle call to service in the interests of our fellow 
man. 

If by scientific management and study of detail 
there has been an increase of output at the usual 
expense of energ}^ then by utilization of the un- 
used reservoirs of energy by the majority rather 
than the few, a further multiplication of effective 
results will follow. But man is more than a ma- 
chine and psychic factors enter into the^process 
of unlocking the reserves, even the physical re- 
serves ; and unless interest is aroused, an idea be- 
comes dominant, or devotion to a cause is de- 
veloped, the great reservoirs remain untouched. 
A soulless system of efficiency will scarcely suf- 
fice for the higher efficiency pointed out by Doc- 
tor Hall and suggested by Doctor James. 

"Second breath" or "second wind" is a physical 



314 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

phenomenon not rare. In cases of second breath 
a feeling of fatigue is followed by an apparent 
recovery, when the effort can be maintained in- 
definitely. Cases of mental second breath, us- 
ually of study, have been observed. The ques- 
tion of whether the work accomplished during 
mental second breath is better or worse than un- 
der ordinary conditions is far from being settled. 
It is very doubtful if the quality is any better than 
would result from the same degree of application 
and concentration by the same individual under 
normal conditions, unless the efforts to push over 
the barriers of fatigue and the resultant concen- 
tration bring about mildly ecstatic conditions in 
which the convergence of several streams of en- 
ergy upon the processes of thought intensifies 
those processes and thereby enhances the product. 
Emotion has been found to play an important 
role in prompting the continuation which brings 
into play the erethic state. Following the feeling 
of fatigue and pain there is an intensification of 
the feeling tone; fear, anxiety, and rivalry enter 
as factors in prompting the continuance. This is 
followed by a feeling of increasing power and 
finally a cessation of pain, absorption in work, 
and a feeling of increased power and momentum. 
Physical erethism (according to Partridge) is less 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 315 

disturbing than mental, and there is a close rela- 
tion between erethism and the absorption states, 
and hypnosis, trance, and ecstasy. 

In Cannon's studies in bodily changes arising 
from the major emotions, the reservoirs from 
which are drawn the extra supplies of energy in 
physical erethism are pretty clearly pointed out. 
The intensified emotional tone and the pain 
arising from the partial asphyxia functionize in 
liberating adrenin into the blood, resulting in 
quickened circulation, heightened arterial blood 
pressure, and the liberation of energy-making 
stuff, the stored up sugar. Fatigue is lessened 
and the increase of power is felt almost instantly. 

In mental "second breath" or erethism the lo- 
cation of the reservoirs of energy is not so clearly 
indicated. That there is the increased feeling of 
power following the intensified emotional tone is 
certain. It is also quite clear that the emotions 
playing a role in pushing past the first barriers of 
fatigue are major ones; fear, anxiety, rivalry; 
fear of an examination, fear of failure; anxiety 
over the outcome of the venture, or over the time 
limitations upon the work ; rivalry, with its modi- 
fied form of anger. These very emotions have 
been clearly demonstrated as capable of function- 
izing as stimulators of the adrenals, and adrenin 



ne HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

in the blood, even in minute quantities, among its 
many other effects, raises the blood pressure, and 
though it acts as a vasoconstrictor in some regions, 
owing to the absence of vasoconstrictor nerves in 
heart, lungs, and central nervous organs, the 
heightened blood pressure results directly in an in- 
creased blood supply to the brain. Just what are 
the physiological waste products of mental proc- 
esses is not known ; but presuming there are such 
waste products corresponding to the accumula- 
tion of metabolites in the fatigued muscles, then 
the laving of the brain tissues by an increased 
amount of blood would, as in the case of the fa- 
tigued muscle tissue, by v/ashing out and carrying 
off these waste products, permit further energiz- 
ing. Adrenin may have other specific effects 
upon the brain tissue. Be that as it may, the in- 
creased blood supply as a consequence of the in- 
tensification of the emotional tone doubtless f unc- 
tionizes in producing the phenomenon of mental 
second breath. 

In another place we have epitomized two arti- 
cles on alcoholism. According to one the alcohol 
motive was found in aroused sense of power en- 
joyed by the inebriated individual at certain 
stages of intoxication, an expanded self, and that 
this euphoristic feeling promoted an exaltation 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 21T 

which contributed towards higher activities and 
levels of consciousness. According to the other, 
the alcohol motive is found in a desire for relief 
from the tension which is a correlate of intellec- 
tual progress, the tension becoming greater as 
men live more nearly up to the limit of the latterly 
acquired capacities. This theory for the alcohol 
motive runs parallel with the play motive. 

Alcoholic intoxication can scarcely be called 
artificial ecstasy. Alcoholic intoxication presents 
psychological conditions simulating those of ec- 
stasy, and this simulation may result in erroneous 
conclusions. In ecstasy there is a central focus 
of attention. In alcoholic intoxication, on the 
contrary, there is a confusion and a decentraliza- 
tion owing to the paralysis of the more lately ac- 
quired cortical layers. It is not a convergence of 
psychic nerve streams as in ecstasy, but a shutting 
off of some. 

It therefore appears doubtful that alcoholic in- 
toxication is a factor contributing towards the 
higher powers of man any further than that it is 
sought as an artificial though deleterious means of 
relaxation. 

There are intoxications more nearly allied to 
ecstasy than is the alcoholic intoxication. Nar- 
cosis has been termed chemical ecstasy. Intoxi- 



218 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

cations approximating ecstasy are those wherein 
there is an excitation or stimulation of some sense 
organ till there is a concentration of attention 
upon it, accompanied by an isolation more or less 
complete of the outer world, hallucinations, vi- 
sions, etc. An ecstatic Dervisher, a Bolivian coco 
chewer, and an Indian opium smoker have strik- 
ing resemblances. Ecstasy, as a hypnotism of 
the emotions or thoughts, without doubt plays a 
very important contributory role in calling out 
the higher powers and energies of man. Periods 
of deep meditation and reverie are far from un- 
common with men of achievement. 

As has been pointed out, ecstasy may vary 
greatly in intensity from the faintest twilight 
form to the deepest catalepsy. A single case of 
ecstasy may pass through all the forms, and the 
nervous energy stored up at its initiation may all 
be expended in the consummation of the ecstatic 
state itself. But the ecstatic state may abruptly 
terminate at any stage, and the accumulated nerv- 
ous energy, seeking outlet, may pass into various 
channels. And these interrupted or only partially 
complete cases of ecstasy are those which usually 
functionize as keys in unlocking the reservoirs of 
energy constituting the higher powers of man. 
When there has been concentration of attention 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION -219 

upon a single point of consciousness till other sen- 
sations are temporarily eliminated and there has 
followed a keen, inexplicable sense of the gran- 
deur, the greatness of the object of attention, es- 
pecially when at the focus of attention lies a 
thought, an idea, there are left upon the brain 
centers ineradicable impressions whose complexes 
will ever after come into consciousness in an im- 
perative manner likely to functionize as a deter- 
miner of conduct. Hence it is that an idea can 
dominate one's life. This is particularly true if 
the ecstatic condition fixing the complex is re- 
peated and has issued from a contemplation of 
what in its nature has a more or less direct bear- 
ing upon the future activities of the individual. 
Many are the agents of ecstasy, as we have 
seen, and perhaps few are the individuals who in 
some form or another have not experienced ec- 
stasy to some degree. There are few who reach 
the higher stages; but whether or not ecstasy is 
permitted to exert its full influence towards de- 
veloping the higher powers of man depends upon 
the manner in which the stream of nervous energy 
directed upon the single point is permitted to ex- 
pend itself. Allowed to exhaust itself in idle 
revery or day dreaming, it is evanescent in in- 
fluence if not injurious; but sublimated or re- 



320 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

fined, transformed into useful work, it becomes 
psychically dynamogenic and impels towards a 
full utilization of physical and mental powers to- 
wards an adequate and lasting manifestation. 
The ecstatic state repeated in the same way or 
upon the same point fixes this great directing 
agent in the conscious and subconscious till con- 
sciously and subconsciously the individual is ruled 
by what has taken form first in the ecstatic state. 
Thus a thought, an idea, a vision, glimpsed only 
for the briefest part of a second, may eventuate 
in molding a life's course and pointing the road 
to the highest achievement. It may be love, re- 
ligion, science, friendship, prayer, patriotism, 
beauty, music, which initiates the ecstasy in which 
the star gleam is caught which becomes the com- 
pass to the individual's life; but once caught and 
held, it beckons ever onward and upward. And 
following its direction in the climb upward there 
are left behind blessings to humanity in the form 
of art, scientific achievement, literature, architec- 
ture, something to say to posterity, "See what 
can be done by one of genius." 

Not only has the ecstatic state played a role 
among the cultured races, but among primitive 
peoples as well. In various ways are the ecstatic 
states produced. The peyote religion has taken 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 231 

a strangely strong hold upon the American tribes 
of Indians in recent years, and the secret lies in 
the ecstasy produced in the ceremonies. The 
beautiful visions seen in the peyote tepee have a 
softening mystic effect upon the devotees, while 
the psychic power of suggestion perhaps aug- 
menting the therapeutic value of peyote itself has 
performed some wonders fascinating to the 
Indian minds. So strangely powerful has been 
the influence of this religion upon the tribes that 
it has in numerous cases given new direction to the 
tribal life. 

That the ecstatic state has been conspicuous 
among many primitive peoples is quite readily ap- 
parent from an examination of their cults. Prim- 
itive man is generally religious, and dreams and 
visions play an important role in the lives of the 
tribe members. Fasting and religious vigils of 
astonishing rigidity are utilized to produce the 
ecstatic states, while dances, bodily exercises, and 
repetition of monotonous words are all utilized to 
produce swoons and ecstasy. 

The rigidity of belief and characteristic sim- 
plicity of the savage mind, together with his nerv- 
ous susceptibility, and his proneness to be gov- 
erned by emotions, all combine to make the 



323 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

ecstatic state not only common but important as a 
tribal influence. 

The rigorous, impressive, exacting, and fre- 
quently prolonged initiation ceremonies of the 
natives, with the frequently repeated conditions 
wherein at least the lesser ecstatic states were pro- 
duced, made these ceremonies a strong factor in 
absorbing the attention of the novitiate in the 
importance of tribal life and the great signifi- 
cance of becoming a fully initiated man therein. 
And the splendid solidarity of the tribes, the re- 
sourcefulness of their hunters and warriors, their 
ferocity and skill in fighting the encroachments 
of the white man, all bespeak the excellent pur- 
posiveness of the initiation ceremonies in arous- 
ing the reserve energies of the young man and 
calling out the best response to his environment 
by making the task of becoming a tribe member 
of use and skill the dominant idea of his life. 
Pity it is that every young man in our society to- 
day cannot in his educational activities have de- 
veloped within him an equally weighty impression 
of the importance of filling well and usefully a 
position in the society which has brought him 
into life and to which he owes a life of service. 
And pragmatically it makes little difference 
whether that consciousness of tribal unity is im- 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 323 

pressed upon the native young initiate through 
the idea of a great manitou bursting in upon him, 
or whether it be a twihght awakening of a social 
consciousness. Its value to the tribe is seen in the 
service he renders it as a result. 

What religious ecstasy will accomplish in pro- 
moting tribal or racial solidarity, even when the 
ceremonies are of a rude, coarse type, is seen in 
the vodu cult among the negroes of Louisiana 
and Hayti. 

While, as we have seen, the initiation ceremo- 
nies are quite universal, yet their social signifi- 
cance is nowhere better illustrated than in Aus- 
tralia. In the Australian initiation rites every 
rule laid down was supposed to have social com- 
munity value. To have every member of the tribe 
working to the best of his ability for the social 
weal of the community was of prime importance. 
The initiation ceremonies are therefore not mere 
jumble or nonsense. The whole is socially purpo- 
sive. A deep, lasting, mastering interest in tribal 
life and tribal affairs must be aroused within 
the novitiate, for his own good and the good 
of the tribe ; his own good being inseparable from 
the community good. Principles to govern the 
life conduct of the youth are therefore impressed 
upon him in a way never to be forgotten; obedi- 



224 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

ence to the old men of the tribe, observance of the 
marriage laws, his duties in regard to the division 
of spoils of war or chase, careful observance of the 
rules and laws of magic and where to exercise it. 
Before he can take his place as a tribesman, en- 
joying its privileges and knowing its secrets, it 
must be known that he has the qualifications. 

That the ceremonies duly impress upon the 
novitiate all these things so vital to the welfare of 
the tribe is evidenced by the fact that instances 
have been known wherein fracture of some of the 
rules forbidding the use of certain foods has been 
followed by fatal effects due to the workings of 
conscience and the fear of the results threatened.' 

Those who have visited and been among the 
native Australians, living according to their prim- 
itive conditions, agree that sterling qualities are 
found among them in men who try to live accord- 
ing to the standards set by their traditions, — 
qualities which are unfortunately not found 
among these tribes so under the changed condi- 
tions of white civilization that tribal customs have 
been abandoned. 

And what could be expected? This is not due 
to the inferiority of our civilization, but to the in- 



*See Hewitt's Native Tribes of Southeastern Australia, 
p. 639. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 335 

adaptability of the natives and to the unsuitable 
and unfavorable conditions concomitant upon 
abandonment of those institutions which centered 
their whole life's interest in the community and a 
shifting of that interest to a self naturally shiftless 
and too poorly endowed for success where individ- 
ualistic struggle predominates. The dominant 
interest is gone. No state of ecstasy encourages 
the development of the best that is in them. To 
their own natural vices, uncontrolled by tribal 
tabu, are added the vices of their new but changed 
life, and the worst that is in them comes to the 
fore. 

When Mr. Howitt, as headsman of the Kurnai, 
revived for scientific purposes the Jeraeil, which 
had been discontinued for a number of years, one 
of the worthy old black fellows said to him: "I am 
glad it will be held, for our boys are all going wild 
since they have gone to the white people ; we have 
no longer any control over them.' 

Of anger there remains little to be said other 
than what has been touched upon elsewhere in this 
treatise. As pointed out by Cannon, anger is one 
of the most effective emotions in preparing for 



^Webster's Primitive Secret Societies, p. 59, quoted from 
Howitt. See also Spencer and Gillen, Tribes Central Austra- 
lia, pp. 7, 8. 



236 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

great and sudden output of power in meeting 
emergency conditions of flight, defense, or con- 
test. It is preeminently serviceable for such dis- 
play of power. Fear often acts as its counter- 
part. That anger functionizes as a developer of 
the higher powers of man in a biologically pur- 
posive way is scarcely to be gainsaid; whether it 
enters as a factor into the development of intel- 
lectual accomplishments and long distance pur- 
suits depends entirely on how the emotion once 
aroused is worked off. Exhausted in useless 
storming it furnishes a vent for unusual pressure, 
nothing more. Refined, sublimated, directed into 
useful channels, it may be the initiative toward 
meritorious achievement. Mastery of anger qual- 
ifies the individual for control of trying situa- 
tions, and may be considered basal to general ag- 
gressiveness. It is in varying degrees an essential 
concomitant of the fighting spirit, the varying 
kinds and qualities of combat demanding varying 
degrees, tensities, and refinement of anger. So- 
cialized, it plays a role in community betterment 
and becomes of community value as it becomes 
altruistic rather than individualistic. Righteous 
indignation is frequently the key to reservoirs of 
unusual energy. 

Not alone in primitive cults has ecstasy played 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 22T 

a role in calling out the best in its devotees. The 
ecstasy cult of Dionysos came as a reviver if not 
a savior of Grecian art, religion, and ethics. The 
sleepy gods of Olympia were startled by the noisy 
train of dancing Dionysians, and Greece awak- 
ened from her lethargy took a new lease on life 
which kept her from a decline such as other coun- 
tries had experienced. The wild, entrancing re- 
ligion of the Thracian god, molded into the Greek 
life and fused with the best of the Olympian 
product, called into existence a new national 
spirit. It was the principle of ecstasy blending 
with dreams of beauty. It was the mysterious 
union of ApoUonianism and Dionysianism, giv- 
ing rise to the birth of Attic tragedy. Around the 
shores of the Mediterranean sprang up rehgions 
in which this same ecstatic element functionized 
and from its peoples came developments in arts 
and philosophy bespeaking the efficacy of ecstasy 
as a freer of the higher powers of man. We 
have not here gone into an examination of Mo- 
hammedanism, Buddhism, and others, for space 
limitation forbids, but all bespeak the presence 
and importance of the ecstatic state. 

Few religions have made more striking contri- 
butions in this direction than has the Christian. 
Founded by one who to a remarkable degree lived 



328 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

in a higher level of consciousness, and who ener- 
gized to a maximum because motivated by an idea 
or ideal which had early in life taken full posses- 
sion of him, and which raised him above fatigue, 
suffering, trials, and opposition, which caused 
him to find exaltation and glory even in his agony. 
And from Jesus' day to this have the Christians 
with the example of their great leader ever before 
them, furnished many and striking examples of 
power and strength which carry one over every 
obstacle and to a victory more or less complete. 

The splendid courage and genius of Jesus and 
imitated and further demonstrated in his follow- 
ers in all ages, without doubt found its dynamo- 
genesis in the ecstasy of devotion, prayer, medi- 
tation. Devotion to the Christian religion has 
given to the world untold treasures of art, lit- 
erature, genius. The acme of group religious 
manifestations and ecstatic joys with psychic ex- 
altation was reached at Pentecost, while in an 
individual way Paul's expansion of soul "to all 
the universe" was the very acme of ecstasy. 

And what promise or lesson does all this hold 
out to us? Pedagogically it holds out the prom- 
ise that what has been may be, and the lesson is 
that if we would have from each member of so- 
ciety the optimum of behavior there must be en- 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 329 

gendered the maximum of energy, and this must 
be called out by those emotional conditions which 
shake the whole man into wakeful activity. Only 
when one has caught an ecstatic vision of the great 
possibilities, when with the keen enjoyment of 
deep thought there has flashed before his mind 
the gleam of light which like a powder train leads 
to the great reservoirs of power within him, are 
there liberated within him the forces which will 
under intelligent control bring out the best in him. 
Love, love of work, love of woman, love of hu- 
manity, love of country, devotion, devotion to the 
home land, to a society, to a cause, to an idea, — 
all act as the compass which aids in laying down 
on the chart of life a course which without fail 
or deviation brings to the port of greatest achieve- 
ment. 

But an idea alone, inactive devotion, idle dream- 
ing, never bring this. There must be work, — 
ceaseless, tireless work. Work is what vitalizes 
the ecstatic vision. And to work to the maxi- 
mum means much. It means to keep within the 
limits to go beyond which would mean permanent 
impairment of efficiency; it means the elimination 
of waste, — waste in time, labor, motion. Along 
with the psychic forces loosening and controlling 
the nervous powers there must go a conservation 



230 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

of energy and physical machinery which safe- 
guards its permanency and proper use. 

There is no greater psychically dynamogenic 
factor than altruism. Everywhere the need of 
humanity for service is apparent. To-day the 
call is loud for devoted service. But the service 
demanded is the best individual effort following 
the best individual preparation therefor, that 
effort to be consecrated to the good of the com- 
munity. 

Somewhere in our educational system to-day 
there is need for something to supply to us what 
the initiation ceremonies do to the savage com- 
munity; viz, there is need that every young man 
and woman shall be aroused to the importance 
and seriousness of becoming a member of society, 
aroused to a social consciousness which will con- 
tribute to social solidarity. Far too many young 
people enter life's activities as logs drifting on 
the stream of time, rather than as steamboats or 
even canoes directed by intelligent energy. 

Sooner or later every person should become at- 
tached to some cause, working for a purpose 
whose ultimate goal may have only been glimpsed 
in some ecstatic moment, which thus becomes a 
guiding star towards his destiny. 

The higher powers of man, to be fully utilized 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 331 

demand a fuller knowledge of man himself, — of 
his physical limitations as well as the psychical 
attributes. Between the psychical and physical 
there is a well-balanced cooperation which if 
thrown out of poise is attended with dangers and 
penalties. "The best that is in me for the good 
of humanity," is a slogan everyone can well adopt. 
Religion develops this spirit of altruism as per- 
haps nothing else does. Religion has always been 
a stimulator of higher achievement, though per- 
haps at times negatively so. 

In no period of the individual life is there 
greater need for the directional influence of a 
dominating interest than in the storm and stress 
period of pubescence, when the adolescent life is 
made up of impulse and intense feeling. At such 
a time there is needed a back fire to sex, and this 
is found in the interest which absorbs in whole- 
some activity the nervous energy which otherwise 
will run into morbid lines with physically and 
morally pathological results. Youth is drunken- 
ness without wine^ and the tendency for fast liv- 
ing at this age must find a legitimate outlet, to 
avoid morbidity and perversion. At puberty the 
individual breaks into the larger life of the 



'Goethe. 



233 HIGHER POWERS OF MAN 

race, and for that event every preparation should 
have been made by providing adequate and 
proper outlet for every force which nature at that 
period provides so lavishly. The whole being 
thrills with the larger life, and under right guid- 
ance and given legitimate direction it can lead 
to the inspiration of the poet, the muse, the genius 
in every line of activity. Its perversion leads in 
the opposite direction. 



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